Recapping #TheRippleEffect

Before we fully say goodbye to 2019, we want to take a few minutes to recap the past 12 fantastic months. This year was all about showcasing the power of individuals to create change. Mentoring is creating #TheRippleEffect across Scotland and the impact is being felt everywhere. When our young people are supported to reach their potential, the impact is felt in waves and they radiate that positivity back into the community. But mentoring doesn’t just benefit young people: our mentors learn new skills, our workplaces are reinvigorated, our schools have more support and our communities are better connected.

Read on to hear about the ways the MCR community has created #TheRippleEffect in 2019.

1. Propelling Expansion into New Local Authorities.

This year we’ve created new partnerships with Clackmannanshire Council, North Ayrshire Council, Shetland Islands Council, South Lanarkshire Council and West Dunbartonshire Council to bring mentoring to more young people across Scotland.

2. Hitting Milestone after Milestone

In Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, our passionate mentoring community reached 100 this year!

3. Breaking the Silence on Mental Health

Our young people this year led the conversation on mental health at our conference, #BraveNotBroken.

4. Giving Back to the Community

A record number of YST Young people completed their Duke of Edinburgh and volunteered in their community.

5. Directing Policy

This year our young people played a key role in shaping Scottish policy. YST young people took part in the 1,000 voices initiative and questioned policy makers at our annual conference. MCR’s Founder Dr. Iain MacRitchie was also published in Celcis’ Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care, where he outlined his vision for care policy in Scotland.

6. Creating New Partnerships

This year we partnered with new organisations across the country. Check out our Partner page to read more & to get involved.

7. Celebrating Success

This year, we were honoured to win the Education Award at the Inspiring City Awards, The Scottish Public Service Awards’ Third Sector Partnership Award & the Diversity Through Education at the Scottish Diversity Awards 2019

8. Putting Young People in Charge

Young people aren’t just in YST, they also shape it. In addition to designing and running the MCR 2019 conference, our interns started work on a new tool to better support young people once they leave school.

9. Enhancing Mentor Support

We launched our fantastic new Mentor Hub online tool as a one stop shop of resources to better support mentor relationships.

10. Reaching an Unprecedented Number of Young People

This year, we were humbled and honoured for our programme to reach 2,000 young people across Scotland. We are committed to supporting each of these young people to find, grow and use their talents. But our work isn’t over, we won’t stop until every young person in Scotland is empowered to reach their full potential, no matter their circumstances

Thank you to everyone who helped make 2019 such a brilliant year. Before we go, we want to give our young people, mentors & partners the final say about the impact they’ve seen this year.

“With my mentor Charley, I can truly be myself. Charley has been beside me the whole way. He's shared how he got through tough times in his life. He's helped me focus. He's helped me think I could go to college, which is something I've never believed before.”

The best thing I got out of mentoring was I believe in myself a lot more. She really, really took into consideration what I liked, my dislikes and what I wanted to do with my life. She pushed me forward because she knew I wasn't very confident. She knew that I didn't really believe in myself and that I didn't really have anyone else pushing me. She took me to open days at universities and colleges. It helped me get through school. I didn't necessarily want to speak to my mentor about the stuff that was happening but she knew that I had boundaries and she was totally fine with keeping them. It felt really good.”

“Daniel, straight away, was an absolute pleasure to work with. He's genuinely gone through tough things in his life, but it’s not stopped him from being a happy, resilient, upbeat person. He’s never really let any of the wider challengers he's gone through impact the way he is with people in school and with me. I have been really lucky in a sense, he's got that ability to start the conversation or tell you what's going on or be light-hearted if he needs to be, so I’ve always found it really, really a privilege to be honest.”

“My young person is a ray of sunshine, a chatterbox and I look forward to seeing them each week. My mentee has strong aspirations for the future and I look forward to chatting through these together and seeing where they’ll progress onto after school. Despite it being such a short period of time, I feel like we are getting to know each other because we are both pretty open people and have shared things about ourselves already.”

“I love our conversations… I always come back to the office smiling. I look forward to seeing my mentee each week.”

“The school team are already noticing the positive side effects in classes, with the young people showing increased motivation and resilience. This is a positive partnership in action. Several retiring staff have also signed up to mentor, continuing their journey as part of Team Inverurie and further showing how MCR has become an integral part of the school and community in such a relatively short space of time.”

“For the whole community, it comes down to the meeting every young person’s needs. While the programme targets specific young people, it has an enormous impact on the whole school. Attainment is a big factor, the MCR young people have seen their attainment rates improve and that means we’ve got more children operating at a higher levels. This lets us build more opportunities into the timetable and that’s had an affect on the whole senior phase.”

“For those in the Fire Service, we are ideal partners for mentoring with MCR. We work in a professional environment whereby we’re dealing with officers and adults all the time, but with this you’re developing your softer skills when you’re dealing with a child as well as your listening skills. You’re having to listen to what they’re talking about and what they’re interested in, so you’re changing the way you think and about how youngsters think as well. So it gives us a better understanding when we’re out working in the community.”

The MCR Pathways programme has proven results in helping bring greater stability to the lives of young people who have too few adults in their lives they can look to for support. I believe it will also enrich the lives of our staff who volunteer.”

“West Dunbartonshire Council is pleased to work in partnership with MCR Pathways to offer disadvantaged pupils one-to-one support to help them flourish not only at school and through their education. Mentoring could also help them in their personal lives. We have many talented young people in our schools and we want to ensure all children are given every chance to succeed and reach their full potential.”