Rebecca Wade-Palmer, Volunteer Manager at mentoring charity ReachOut, looks at how they support their volunteers with career and employment opportunities.
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One of the things that we hear over and over again from our volunteer mentors is just how rewarding mentoring a young person can be. Seeing their mentee grow in character and confidence gives so many of our volunteers a sense of having made a real impact in their community.

Volunteers are at the heart of everything we do at ReachOut. Many of them are university students based in and around the areas we work, as well as former ReachOut mentees who themselves go on to volunteer as mentors. As well as the knowledge that they’re making a difference, we want to give something back to our volunteers, and we do that through a programme called ReachOut Futures.

ReachOut Futures is an innovative volunteering programme that rewards university students and ReachOut alumni with exciting career and employment opportunities.

We partner with a range of companies to offer our volunteers access to employability workshops on topics such as money management and interview skills; industry insight days where they’re introduced to a variety of different career paths; as well as the opportunity to apply for exciting internships and work experience placements.

Perhaps the biggest draw of ReachOut Futures though, is the opportunity for student and alumni volunteers to have their own career mentor. We reward mentoring with mentoring – giving them access to an experienced working professional who can provide them with guidance and support over the course of the year.

For university students who give their time as volunteers, being part of ReachOut means making an enormous difference in the life of a young person. At the same time, they’re able to learn new skills, make new connections and gain access to opportunities to kick-start their career.

Likewise, as we celebrate our 20th Anniversary as a charity this year, there are growing numbers of young people who have been through and benefited from ReachOut’s mentoring programmes in schools. What’s fantastic is seeing more and more of these young people returning as mentors to give back to our current generation of mentees. Being able to support them with these exciting career and employment opportunities through ReachOut Futures is just one of the ways we can say thank you.

For the companies who provide these opportunities, we connect them with enthusiastic, motivated and diverse talent, helping to contribute to their wider recruitment and DE&I goals, as well as giving their staff the opportunity to volunteer and make a difference in their local community. Companies we’ve partnered with in recent years have included Macquarie Group, Bupa, Kroll, EDF Renewables, Simkins LLP, ECI Partners, Bloomberg and the NFL.

One of our volunteers who has been through ReachOut Futures is Sergio, a Biochemistry student at the University of London. Through ReachOut, he volunteered as a mentor in a local High School, supporting Year 9 mentee Flavio. “Flavio has been an absolute joy to mentor,” Sergio told us. “It has been a privilege to see his growth as a mentee, and more importantly as a person through the time we spent together.”

As well as being a mentor himself, Sergio was also paired with his own career mentor, James, a Senior Manager at financial services firm Kroll. “James helped guide me through improving my CV,” Sergio said, “and was also able to provide me with life and career advice. He was able to leverage his own network to find out which internships would be available for me to apply to, and which he would be able to refer me to. Having a career mentor helped me to develop as a person and as a professional.”

Through ReachOut Futures, Sergio was also able to secure a placement as a Junior Associate with Macquarie Group, one of our long-standing corporate partners, where he worked for two days a week alongside his studies.

Elsewhere, our most recent ReachOut Futures cohort gained summer internships with EDF Renewables, and PSG Equity, 12-month work placements at Kroll and, like Sergio, junior associate placements at Macquarie, as well as a host of other opportunities.

At ReachOut, we believe in the power of mentoring to change lives. Our main focus, of course, is young people, aged 9-19, from under-resourced communities in London, Greater Manchester and Liverpool. The support of a volunteer mentor helps them to grow in character and confidence, sparking real change in themselves and society.

But as well as this, we know the impact in turn that mentoring can have on the amazing people that support us through volunteering. Through having a career mentor and taking part in training, workshops and internships, we can help our young volunteers plan for their futures as well.

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