Becoming a charity partner
Trust Youth offers a unique way for charities to engage directly with young people and schools across London and the UK, forging strong links and raising awareness of their valuable work throughout the school and wider community.
Our current charity partners value not only the opportunity to engage directly with the young people taking part in Trust Youth, but to have their message championed and promoted by those young people to their peers.
Our charity partners provide one of the core elements of the projects - providing schools with a volunteer or member of staff to act as a mentor for the young people. The mentor visits the students in school and gives them advice and guidance on fundraising and talks to them about the work of their charity and how they can get involved in charity/volunteering work in the future. In return, the students support their partner charity with their fundraising and awareness raising efforts.
The purpose of the Trust Youth mentoring scheme is to provide valuable support and development for Trust Youth teams. It promotes understanding of the mentor’s charity, helps teams to gain a better knowledge of working for a charity and enables teams to be better prepared in the challenges they may face by tapping the mentor’s knowledge, advice and thoughts. However, mentors are not expected to be an expert or to be able to solve all problems raised!
What are the benefits of the Trust Youth mentoring scheme?
For the Trust Youth teams:
- It helps in the process of understanding about the charity sector in general, and your charity in particular, from someone with experience of the sector and the charity
- It assists in developing skills, helpful attitudes and habits (e.g.: confidence, self-reliance, questioning assumptions, punctuality)
- It provides an opportunity for a team to reflect on their progress and resolve their problems in a confidential environment
- It encourages a consideration of working in the charity sector in the future
- It encourages a sense of affinity to the charity
- It helps and improves the team’s fundraising and awareness-raising project(s) for your charity
For the mentor:
- It broadens his/her own skills and knowledge
- It may provide a different dimension to his/her current job role
- It brings new insights into the charity and how it is viewed from an external, young-persons perspective
- It enables him/her to demonstrate additional skills in developing other individuals
- It consolidates and extends his/her professional and personal networks
For your charity as an organisation:
- It forges links with the school
- It raises greater and more qualitative awareness about the charity to a young group, who will then raise awareness about the charity amongst their school population
- It offers a platform to inform young people of the service(s) available, and opens opportunities for the young people to benefit or volunteer in the future
If you are interested in becoming a charity partner and would like to offer mentoring support to our Trust Youth teams please contact us to find out more!