Mentoring Works

Last night we launched 2013 ReachOut Impact Report at the office of one of our partner organisations, Macquarie Bank in London.

ReachOut is a mentoring charity that has been changing the lives of young people from disadvantaged communities in London for ten years now, and Macquarie staff have been helping since 2007. Dedicated mentors from a variety organisations provide one-to-one support to help young people achieve their future goals.

At the event Macquarie employee Jamie Broom, who volunteers with ReachOut and ran the London Marathon for the charity last April, welcomed everyone and shared a few insights into the Macquarie Group Foundation.

The Foundation, has contributed more than $US200 million to over 2,500 community organisations since its inception, and last year alone Macquarie's staff also provided more than 38,000 hours of support to not-for-profit organisations. It has funded the ReachOut Junior Mentors programme for the last two years and will continue to do so into 2015.

Every Wednesday evening Jamie and a few colleagues catch a cab to the ReachOut Academy programme in Hackney where they provide one-to-one academic support to young people. Jamie has been volunteering for 3 years now and really enjoyed his experience and hopes that more colleagues will be getting involved soon!

Our Chief Executive, Xavier Bosch, then shared some of the impact made by ReachOut in the past year: 

Academic results from our young people are much higher than national averages: 10% at KS2 level (10 year olds) and 40% at GCSE, and also much higher than the averages in the areas where we operate (Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Camden and Manchester). 

However he also pointed out that ReachOut is not only an academic organisation but that they view academic achievement as a proxy for achieving character growth. Xavier said: 

“There is a limit to how good you can be at maths, or football, but there is no limit to how good a person you can be.” 

ReachOut’s effectiveness in this area was evidenced through countless numbers of personal stories where young people in their own words have told that had it not been for ReachOut they could have easily ended up in jail, like some of their friends or relatives, that thanks to the mentoring they have achieved much more than they ever thought they could.

Following Xavier a drama student from Queen Mary University of London, Charlie Murrell-Edwards, spoke about her experience as a mentor on the ReachOut Club programme and how she watched on child go from being too shy to even join in with the games in the first session to eventually beat-boxing while everyone tried to play musical statues with no music! Charlie said:

“it’s great to feel as though I’m making some kind of difference in the local community. I definitely feel more a part of east London thanks to ReachOut.”

Finally, we heard from a ReachOut mentee called Glory.  Glory takes part in the Junior Mentors programme that the Macquarie Group Foundation funds, where the young people work one-to-one and in groups with mentors on academic, teamwork and leadership skills. He said “When I started I just thought - urgh what’s this? But my mentor was really friendly and supported me with my coursework as well as having fun. ReachOut helped me to decide that I want to work in media and so I’m going to do media studies as one of my A-levels.” Glory is also planning to apply to university in a couple of years.

The evening was rounded off with a wonderful 30 second video and a fantastic song about ReachOut created by 10 and 14 year old mentees respectively.  These were part of a competition by ReachOut asking “What does ReachOut mean to you?” Please take a couple of minutes to support the charity by viewing the shortlisted entries and voting for your favourite here: http://www.reachoutuk.org/competition-shortlist/

If you'd like to read the full Impact Report you can download it here.