Mentoring Plus is a charity that supports young people in the Bath area who are facing various challenges through mentoring and activity schemes. Helping young people feel safe, feel heard and feel hopeful for their future. After meeting Ruth Keily, CEO and Kat Lazenby, Grants Fundraiser at Mentoring Plus and learning about their work, we explored how we could support this charity. Ruth and Kat have been extremely helpful in identifying areas that would be a good fit.
We asked Ruth to tell us what Mentoring Plus is all about and this is what she said.
“Mentoring Plus provides one to one mentoring and support for children and young people who are experiencing tough challenges including family breakdown, bereavement, isolation, experience of domestic violence, a parent or family member in prison, experience of being in or leaving care.
We match them with an adult volunteer from the local community who we train, vet and support. Many of us can think of someone, when we were younger, who supported us and helped us to feel respected, heard & valued. We aim for our mentors to be one of those people for the children and young people we support.
The young person meets with their mentor weekly over a 12-month period. All sessions include a positive activity that the mentee is supported to choose, everything from horse riding to magnet fishing, geo-caching to musical theatre. Of course, all alongside the opportunity for young people to talk about the things that they are experiencing with a kind, consistent, non-judgemental adult.
Behind the scenes our staff work closely with mentors & mentees to make these relationships work, whilst also working with schools and other local agencies to ensure young people and their families get the support they need outside of the mentoring relationship.
Our mentoring helps young people to feel happier, more confident, more connected with their community and more engaged with education. They have better communication and social skills, better relationships with their family and friends, are able to more easily work as part of a team and feel more hopeful about the future.
One of our young people told us about the difference mentoring had made to them:
“Life at home could be very testing for me as my mum had poor health and this prevented her from doing a lot of things including some basic human needs; at times even forgetting my name and who I was. This didn’t just leave me to fend for myself but left me to take over the parental responsibilities for my sister.
I fought, rebelled and disengaged from almost everyone. This led to me getting into trouble with the police, even being told by a crown court judge that if I was to continue this path, I would be dead or in prison by 18. At this point in my life there was no sight of the future for me.
Having a mentor gave me the valuable space every week with someone who wanted to be there out of their own time and was only interested in me and my well-being. This gave me respite and my own place to shine while taking some of the weight off my shoulders.
Mentoring Plus saved my life by getting me off the path that I was following and showing me the potential that I have inside of me. As a direct action of their positive influence, I plan on doing the same for other young people”.
It is crucial that an activities budget for mentoring sessions is provided, so that mentoring pairs can carry out activities without financial pressure being placed on the mentor. Spending time doing positive activities together is essential in helping young people and their mentors build a trusted relationship.“
We are pleased to have made our first grant to support the essential work that MentoringPlus and its Mentors carry out and are now looking at how we can work together.