In 2006, I attended a three-day course led by Youth For Christ on student mentoring. At the time it was suggested that this was going to be 'the new thing' in schools, and would be an ideal avenue for schools workers to explore. Shortly afterwards, myself and Sheena offered our services to a local Secondary School and they leapt at the chance for us to work alongside students who they felt would benefit from some 1:1 time. As it happens, we offered 2:1 time as working solo with one student at a time was new territory fo
r us and we weren't too comfortable with the notion. For a season, this worked really well.
As time progressed though, we adjusted to working independently - and 1:1 mentoring was born! Olive joined in shortly after as well, and other schools began to ask us to get involved with them as they learned of our new stringbow.
Ten years on, we are mentoring in every Secondary School we work in (six), with Sally, Olive and myself delivering the goods. Our commitment in each school ranges from a couple of hours to somewhere in double figures each week, so the question has got to be asked: Are we offering a valuable service as CYO, or are we simply a cheap option for schools to tick an OfSted box?
With over 1,000 mentoring hours under our belt now, we can confidently say it is most definitely the former! We are serving the schools each day, so a perk for them of course has to be the fact we don't charge for what we do. This is a bonus though, not the reason. This term alone, we are seeing young people who are struggling with body image, self esteem, experiencing divorce at home, or abuse, anger issues, struggling to settle into school life, not coping with homework or punctuality...or those who just need 20 minutes each week to chat to somebody. Schools wouldn't entrust such precious young people to a 'cheap labour' organisation. We are trusted. We are valued. And in turn we highly value each young person we see and treat them as if they were the only appointment for the day. We are always treated as members of staff and respected by those involved in student referrals. We have just had one local school change their leadership system, and the first thing that was asked was if CYO was happy to continue providing mentoring. As a low-key alternative to counselling, it really does hit the spot and it is a huge pleasure to offer such a valuable service to the schools.
So when asked if we are simply a form of cheap labour, our response should be "who cares?". But we know we're not regarded as such, and we in turn show our young people the same level of value and respect as we receive from the schools.
Mentoring - it doesn't have a cost, because it's priceless!