Work alongside our creative producers Kai Gama and Kadian Robinson to develop content for The Mentoring Lab and our carefully selected partners. You'll be part of our Youth Committee, a steering group that co-produce projects and ideas highlighting critical matters affecting young people.
With regular challenges, you will enhance the voice of our participants, parents and staff, champion youth mentoring and most importantly develop your character, qualities and career ambitions.
This role will open the door to a creative career.
What young people get in return:
– Letter of commendation from our CEO and Expert Advisory Panel
– Support in developing their CV and a cover letter
– Opportunity to liaise with our sponsors, supporters, and board of directors
– Training to support the voluntary role
– Reimbursement: £10 per day to cover travel and lunch expenses
How to take part
Email us at [email protected] and register your interest and receive an invite to our work experience placement information meeting.
Become a Peer Mentor
If you are 16 years old or over, you can develop essential leadership skills by becoming a peer mentor, mentoring a younger age 10-14 years old.
We will train you to ensure you have a complete understanding of what's involved and how to mentor safely.
– Letter of commendation from our CEO and Expert Advisory Panel
– Support in developing their CV and a cover letter
– Opportunity to liaise with our sponsors, supporters, and board of directors
– Training and development
– Reimbursement: £10 per day to cover travel and lunch expenses
How to take part
Email us at [email protected] and register your interest and receive an invite to our work experience placement information meeting.
Free mentoring for black youth
For young people living in Tower Hamlets, Newham, City, and Hackney, we currently have grant funding to offer six months of free mentoring to 40 young people from black and global majority backgrounds, most in need of mentoring as a means to offer additional support.
This free mentoring aims to support black youth in understanding resilience tools and addressing the social issues that impact their mental health as they journey from adolescence into adulthood.
Sometimes we all feel lonely, misunderstood or stereotyped and our free mentoring will offer compassion, empathy and a safe space to navigate the oftentimes harsh racist environments experienced daily.
Mentoring Tool Kit
Our mentoring is framed by our mentoring tool kit to support our mentors in delivering high-quality mentoring that supports young people in reflecting on their current situation, their strengths and the opportunities available to them.
Learn more about our tool kit here
Hear feedback from Xirone, an ex mentee
Who are the mentors?
This project is supported by our team of trained mentors and corporate volunteers who have undergone our safer recruitment process, including reference and DBS checks.
FAQ
Mentoring is fortnightly. Sessions last one hour. Delivered face to face or online. At school or in a safe space in the community. Mentoring is free for six months. Sessions are available on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays only.
Contact us
If you are aged 8 - 25 years old, from black and global majority backgrounds, and live in Tower Hamlets, Newham, City or Hackney and would like to receive 6 months of free mentoring, please contact [email protected] or call her directly on 02081588500 ext 333.
Share The Love Career Speed Mentoring Event (2022)
Easter's Career Speed Mentoring Event for young people!
For young people aged 10-25 years old and their parents/guardians.
This Easter's online career speed mentoring event, gives young people the opportunity to gain valuable career guidance, experiences, and insights from industry professionals.
Industry professionals will share career insights to enable young people to create achievable pathways to sustainable careers.
Industry professionals come from a range of career backgrounds including;
One Advance (Tech, Business)
Salesforce (Tech)
Pirate Music Studios (Music Industry)
Mayamada (Anime, Gaming)
Coach.Hood (Life Coaching)
Simply Business (Tech, Insurance)
To register and enrol complete this short form: https://forms.gle/xQXYzALVuqtU3mG36
How it works
Young people taking part will each have 15 mins with four random industry professionals, before choosing who they want to have a 30-minute 1:1 career-focused conversation with.
Every young person will leave with at least one take away 'golden nugget' of information, an action for their career plan, and gain access to our career guidance resources.
To register and enrol complete this short form: https://forms.gle/xQXYzALVuqtU3mG36
Last Year's Highlights
Watch highlights from last year's event with special guest Ex England Footballer Emile Heskey.
When: Saturday 16th April 2022
Time: 1-3pm
Where: Hackney Quest, E9 and on Zoom
To register and enrol complete this short form: https://forms.gle/xQXYzALVuqtU3mG36
Online Career Mentoring Festival
Committed to providing career guidance to marginalised youth
At The Mentoring Lab we are committed to focusing our energies on the young people who for whatever reason don't have access to 'good' quality career guidance or information about the amazing jobs and careers that will exist in our glorious world.
We have been funded by The National Lottery to deliver an innovative project where young people get to participate in mini-projects run by industry professionals which on completion they receive 5 months of 1:1 and group career mentoring.
Helping young people realise their value
The Online Career Mentoring Festival is a celebration of professional careers that young people from marginalised backgrounds should know about and feel confident in entering.
Working with the subsection of our society who are often left without quality career guidance, the aim of the festival is to inspire young people who 'should' be seen as assets by our British Industries. Industries are missing out on the amazing grit, resourcefulness and problem-solving abilities of our youth and young people think 'those jobs or careers' are not for them.
Many of the young people mentioned are from black and marginalised backgrounds, with diagnosed or undiagnosed learning needs, who deserve to experience their learning and communication style as a gift and not a hindrance when entering careers across British industries.
Informing adults
At the same time, we also hope to encourage parents, schools, and employers to empower all young people in their network to achieve their career goals, regardless of what the traditional way of thinking about learning needs is.
What's taking place
Our online career mentoring fest gives young people a chance to take part in;
Online Career Speed Mentoring Event
Mini online projects delivered by industry experts
Receiving up-to-date careers guidance and real-life career stories
Five months post-event career mentoring
Access to career development tools
Project-based AQA Unit Awards and Certificates
Online Career Speed Mentoring Event:
Emile Heskey and Deputy Mayor of Hackney were our main guests at last year's online career speed mentoring event called Share The Love. Take a look at all the professionals that also took part and preview what happens at Share The Love via this short YouTube video below.
Young people are offered a safe space to reflect on their current situation, their skills, explore opportunities available to them and areas for development.
In 1:1 or small group career mentoring sessions, young people will design a career pathway that suits their values and ambitions. They will learn how to plan strategically and take lots of SMART action now.
At the end of the mentoring relationship, young people will be more confident, have a fantastic CV, cover letter, and industry knowledge to help them launch and accelerate their careers.
If you know the work we do, you'll know that we use mentoring tools and techniques to frame our programmes and services. At the centre of what we do we give young people the extra support, they need to navigate the structural inequalities they face on a daily basis.
Once you get to know the communities we work with, many young people come from homes of generational unemployment or homes where parents work in low-paid and insecure work. Parents are either too tired, too stressed, or too ill to have informal or the more necessary conversations their child needs to navigate the difficulties faced when trying to enter or sustain employment. Those conversions around the importance of 'small talk' or the frustrating 'office politics' are not had in a manner that helps young people to sustain employment.
That is why we are proud to announce that we have been funded by the BME Health Forum to deliver a 5 month Saturday Mentoring Lunch Club for 17-25 year olds. During the sessions, there will be a carousel of activities that participants can do such as:
● Job and career opportunities workshops
● Health conversations with the medical volunteers
● Healthy cooking on a low budget
● Supported job search / Applying for jobs
● Group and 1:1 befriending and career mentoring
Supported by volunteers who come from medical backgrounds such as medical students or students of health and social care subjects, who will help young people gain qualifications such as First Aid, Food Safety and Hygiene, and an AQA Unit Award Digital Skills: Online Communication.
At The Mentoring Lab we define mentoring as: Being safely guided by a trusted person with a set of qualities and more experience in a particular area, via the use of mentoring tools and techniques, to support another with less experience in the progression and achievement of chosen goals and targets.
During this project, we will provide group and 1:1 mentoring using our Mentoring Toolkit. The toolkit teaches emotional resilience through the Zones of Regulation. Young people will learn to recognise emotions, associate them with a colour and explore strategies to self soothe and regulate their emotions. This enables participants to feel empowered in challenging situations by recognising when they are becoming stressed and less regulated, so that they are able to manage their feelings and get themselves to a healthier place.
The mentoring toolkit also looks at personal development and helps participants set incremental goals towards personal and career progression with the support of a mentor.
Following the bitter impact of the pandemic on older young people, at The Mentoring Lab we are committed to ensuring our services and programmes reach those aged 14-25 years old who need more safe spaces where they can develop and enhance their resilience 'tool kit'. Our founder and directors, know how hard it is to 'figure out' who you are and how you fit into British society, especially when it comes to getting a job and securing a 'good' career. But they did it! Take a look at our founder's via our about the team page.
To enable older young people to better navigate the systemic and cultural barriers they are and will face, we are delighted to announce that we are being funded by London Youth to deliver their Young Creators Development Programme, a four-month programme starting in January 2022.
Due to leaving KS3 and secondary education, young people aged 15 - 25 years old are at the stage in their life they are less likely to engage in the arts and be creative. Using the arts and creativity to manage emotions, explore self and career opportunities is vital for many young people, thus we will use the fund to enable our beneficiaries to reflect, reframe, explore and develop their creativity in a safe space, fit for their age.
The Young Creators programme will also allow for the conversations to focus on transferable skills, qualities and experiences that help with entering jobs and building careers.
This programme will also coincide with a project we have recently been funded for by the BME Health Forum called the 'Mentoring Lunch Club' aimed to provide a safe reflective and creative space that addresses health inequalities young people from marginalised communities experience.
More information will be available soon. The young adults Young Creators Development Programme and Mentoring Lunch Club start in January 2022.
Watch Alex's first Business Bootcamp session, where he introduces himself, his business experience, and how humble beginnings can motivate you to succeed.
Chiemeka, aged 16 is a peer youth mentor at The Mentoring Lab is the club's lead coordinator, planning and running the sessions alongside Alexander Amosu and our trainee youth mentors.
Chiemeka is excited about leading this club and says ' learning business at school or college is good, but you don't really learn 'how' to do business like we are in this club. It's not as easy and glamorous as YouTube and TikTok say it is, but I feel more mature and responsible for taking part. Alex is so inspiring and to have him in my network, as a really really positive role model means a lot.
A mentoring club run by young people for young people, Alex hopes that young people will learn more about business; by doing business. Participants will also gain an AQA Unit Award in Project Management Skills.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our members and we thank Alexander and our funders The National Lottery for supporting the development of young people's skills, qualities, and knowledge.
We hope that participants will be inspired to learn more about the business world and enjoy the sense of accomplishment they will feel on meeting targets and networking with new people.
If you would like to take part, please register here
Summer Work Experience Placements
Putting young people at the centre of our week, we have answered the call to participants wanting to do something more this summer, offering work experience placements to 14-18 year olds.
So if your child will be starting or finishing their GCSE's or A level's this year and have nothing to do with their summer time continue reading.
Below we have more information about our summer work experience placements, during our Game Time programme, online or in our office based in our office in Hackney.
Placements will provide invaluable work experience and allow young people to shadow our delivery team, administrators and Ceo.
As we come to a close in our Pembury Mentoring Programme, funded by the Peabody Young People’s Fund, mentor Paris reflects on the mentoring she and The Mentoring Lab team delivered to 18 young people that live on or near the Pembury Peabody Housing Estate, in Hackney, East London.
'I believe every young person on the program made considerable progress building their ability to reflect develop and explore on their own attributes and experiences, developing problem-solving and critical thinking skills'.
'Adapting the sessions to online had its challenges of keeping my mentees engaged after being on a computer all day at school. However, playing icebreakers and having a structured activity to complete in the session helped focus many of my online mentees and they were able to discover things about themselves that they never knew or had even thought of'.
Committed to young people participation post programme, Founder Ceo Elaine Thomas factors signposting into The Mentoring Lab mentoring programmes, to ensure young people become familiar with trying out new things and develop parents and guardians knowledge of accessible local youth activities. Paris was able to signpost mentees to relevant organisations who can continue to support the Pembury Mentoring programme mentees to achieve their short-term and long-term goals.
We were able to make partnerships and opportunities for signposting with;
Impact Sports: Free football training, trials for the main team, membership, and kit.
Badu Sports: volunteer Football coaching
Pedro Boxing Club: Free boxing training sessions
Greenwich summer youth volunteer programme
Manhood Academy Global
Hackney Works - Employment Support
The Mentoring Lab Youth Advisory Panel
Paris continues by saying 'We were able to offer 5 FREE spaces for young people aged 6-16years old to join Impact Sports FC, in weekly football training and opportunities to join their U8-U16 football teams'.
Three boys that received up to 10 weeks of weekly mentoring from our mentor Paris during the Covid-19 lockdown have been attending the football training sessions and are having an amazing time.
Like the mentoring sessions, through football, the boys are improving their football skills, fitness and improving their social and communication skills. the boys have expressed that the training is a challenge and they have to work hard, which they enjoy.
There are still 2 more spaces left; please contact Paris at [email protected] to register for a space to start training.
Activity:Impact Sports Football Academy training and Club games Day and time of training sessions: Tuesdays 4:45pm-5:45pm/ Fridays 6pm-7pm Location: Haggerston park Astro and field: Yorkton St, London E2 8NH
Photo: Mentor Paris with Mentee
Photo: Pembury Housing Estate, Hackney E5.
Photo: Mentees moving on to Impact Sports Football Club
Work alongside our creative producers Kai Gama and Kadian Robinson to develop content for The Mentoring Lab and our carefully selected partners. You'll be part of our Youth Committee, a steering group that co-produce projects and ideas highlighting critical matters affecting young people.
For young people living in Tower Hamlets, Newham, City, and Hackney, we currently have grant funding to offer six months of free mentoring to 40 young people from black and global majority backgrounds, most in need of mentoring as a means to offer additional support.
