It’s National Mentoring Day on Sunday 27^th October and great opportunity for us to highlight and celebrate the commitment of all the amazing businesses and their staff volunteers who give up their time to mentor with us.

At ThinkForward mentoring is one of the key elements of our transformative five-year programme. All our young people take part in business mentoring and benefit from the support, guidance and advice of a mentor at a crucial time in their lives.

The mentoring programme – which won an award at the prestigious National Mentoring Awards earlier in the year – partners staff volunteers from businesses with students from our schools and also post-16s in London at various colleges.

 

One of our young people, Isaac explained why having a mentor was so important for him: ‘The mentoring sessions really helped me. The mentors are very warm and easy to talk to. We got one-on-one mentors so that made it very personal. The mentors were very constructive – they were good about congratulating us about what we were doing well but very clear about what we could do better, which was really good. I know I’m going to take away lots of the skills that I’ve learned, use them in interviews and professional settings and apply them to the career that I do in the future.’

One of our mentors is Matt who works at Ardian. He said: ‘I’m very aware that we need to provide a level playing field so more young people have access to the same kind of chances, and to develop the work and life skills they need to get them off the starting blocks.

‘What most of the young people have in common is that they are missing access to get experience of a working environment and knowledge about the expectations required of them in the world of work. These gaps make it a lot harder for them to break through and that’s where mentoring can really make a difference.’

So, a massive thank you from everyone at ThinkForward and our young people to our roll of honour of:

London – Blackstone, Proskauer, Bank of America, ICG, Credit Suisse, Ardian State Street and Citi.

Nottingham – KPMG, SDL and Mitrefinch

Kent – 17Capital, University for the Creative Arts, Deloitte and COOK.

MoveForward – EY Foundation in London and Fusion in the West Midlands.

We look forward to continuing to work with you all.

Thank you again!