“Throughout my life, I have encountered many challenges which I can draw upon to aid the support I can offer to a young person. My father passed away when I was 14 and in adult life I have been diagnosed with ADHD, resulting in many periods of self-doubt which I have had to overcome. I am a firm believer in trying to help others overcome their challenges to be the best version of themselves they can be, and therefore, when I heard about MCR Pathways mentoring it screamed out to me as a great opportunity to give back. I welcome the opportunity to help local students find their paths to overcome their individual challenges.

After registering and being interviewed, I attended training which was fantastic and really useful. My wife is a teacher so I knew some of safeguarding but it was really helpful to understand this from the perspective of a volunteer mentor. The relationship I have with a YP as a mentor is fundamentally different to that of a YP and their teacher and so being trained on how to recognise and how to respond to any safeguarding concerns was important. The training also covered unconscious bias which is critical. I work in HR so this is a huge part of what I do and I appreciate that MCRs focus on this with their mentors. Every young person is an individual and our role as mentors is to help them identify what they want to do, to achieve to be successful and how to get there and the training reinforces this.

I was matched with a young person and we quickly bonded over our love of cars, Thai boxing and kickboxing, the MCR team made a really good match. When I first met my young person, I was really nervous, but the MCR Pathways Coordinator in school was really good, she ensured I understood everything and put me at ease. My young person is a character! He is not a shy individual and this helped our conversations too. In fact, a fortnight ago, at the school’s reception, I bumped into a new mentor about to have her first meeting and I was able to chat to her and hopefully be helpful putting her at ease.

My young person says that he is enjoying our sessions. We talk about possible careers and the life he wants after education. He is under a lot of pressure and I am helping him identify what he wants to do with his life. We have done a bunch of work understanding different occupations and how they align with his skills and interests. This week I have been helping him with his chemistry, which I studied at university. We have identified what topics he is struggling with and worked through these and agreed on what he needs to focus on. Part of my job is helping him to identify his priorities and helping him to work through them.

I would recommend mentoring with MCR to others; it is a great thing to do. I have had a very fortunate life in many ways and I am conscious of that and believe we all have a duty to contribute to society to make it so that everyone can be successful. Mentoring with MCR is a great way to do that. It helps us get in front of people very early in their lives and have an impact in terms of what success looks like for them and how they achieve it. Mentoring has also benefited me, it is bringing me down to earth. I have ended up in a corporate bubble and working with my young person has helped me to appreciate a different perspective. My young person is from Lebanon and we talk about the challenges his family living there are facing. Mentoring has also helped me improve my professional practice in mentoring and coaching. These skills are like a muscle that needs to be exercised. Working with my young person has helped me hone them and I can apply them at work.”