Page 51 - Guiding-at-risk-youth-through-learning-to-work-Lessons-from-across-Europe

Guiding at-risk youth through learning to work
Lessons from across Europe

It is not just the mentees who benefit from mentoring. The mentors also have
a chance to develop a range of skills and to demonstrate personal qualities that
are important in life, such as commitment, responsibility and self-confidence
(Miller, 2005). By participating in mentoring programmes, mentors can gain both
practical experience and a sense of satisfaction that they have made a difference
in someone’s life (Blaber and Glazebrook, 2006). Mentors can learn and develop
skills which they can then transfer to their own academic and/or career pathways.
The programmes also provide an opportunity to meet new people and to expand
work and life experiences. Many mentors have highlighted the opportunity to give
back to the community as an important positive factor; this is especially true
when mentors have benefitted from mentoring in the past, perhaps when they
were at school or as part of a community programme. This was confirmed by the
Danish project Rise and follow your dreams. Money is rarely the main incentive
for mentors to become involved in this project. Many feel that something was
missing in their own life when they were growing up and this makes them want to
contribute to the project. When mentoring is provided by teachers, as is the case
with the Roma mentoring projects, it can also help teachers to self-evaluate the
effectiveness of their teaching in the classroom, and potentially improve teaching
methods (Lafferthon et al., 2002).
Communities can also benefit from mentoring programmes. As shown by the
Swedish Nightingale project, mentoring helps to promote positive relationships
between different members of the community and strengthen collaboration
(Blaber and Glazebrook, 2006).
Several factors can help to make mentoring projects successful. First, it is
essential that recruitment is designed to ensure that the most appropriate
mentors for the scheme are involved (US Department of Education, 2006). This
does not necessarily mean those with the most qualifications or the highest skills
levels. Young people may learn more from mentors who have life experiences
which they can share (Youth Mentoring Network, 2009). There should also be a
strategy for recruiting mentees to identify those most in need of support and to
encourage them to take up the offer. Mentees should understand the potential
benefits of taking part in the initiative and be ‘signed up’ to participating, since it
has been shown that the most positive results occur when young people have
chosen to take part rather than when they have been invited or referred by other
organisations (Blaber and Glazebrook, 2006).
After recruitment, it is also important to ensure the correct match between
mentor and mentee. This may depend on the aim of the project: in some cases
young people may benefit from exposure to a different social, cultural or ethnic
group, whereas in others the ability to form a relationship based on shared

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