Mike Niles
Mike ruptured the cruciate ligaments in his knee two weekends ago, he emailed me more concerned about missing the project than the state of his footballing career. He made an incredible, four legged-hobbling return to the project this Tuesday which reminded me of when Martin Keown played an entire football match and found out afterward that he’d fractured his ankle in the second half.
On a more serious note, Mike’s eagerness to return was due to the fact he had just started to work with a young man that really needs his support. They worked exceptionally well together on Tuesday and I’m delighted to see his mentee engaging when in the past he has been one of our hardest to reach young men.
Mike hobbling off on crutches after the project brought a tear to my eye.
A huge thanks to Mike for all his efforts.
Jack Bond
Friday, 11 November 2011
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Volunteer Profile: Sophie Richardson
Name: Sophie Richardson
Current occupation: QMSU President
ReachOut! history: Mentor, Cayley Primary School, 2007/08
Current occupation: QMSU President
ReachOut! history: Mentor, Cayley Primary School, 2007/08
“I found out about ReachOut! in my second year at Queen Mary through Provide Volunteering. I thought it sounded like a really great way to give something back to the local community and I had experience of working in schools and with young people that I wanted to build upon. I was placed in a primary school on Ocean Estate in Tower Hamlets and was a mentor for some of the girls in year 6. The other mentors in the team were volunteers from QM too and so it was a great way to meet other students.
We ran a two hour session once a week, the first hour being sports focussed (the girls we worked with were so competitive!) and the second hour being one-to-one mentoring. My mentee was a keen writer so we focussed on her literacy skills and later, on her numeracy skills. It was a great feeling knowing that I was able to help a young person develop and grow personally over the course of the year, particularly on the run-up to leaving her beloved primary school and moving on to the big world of secondary school!
I thoroughly enjoyed my time as a ReachOut! mentor and was quite sad to say bye to the girls I’d worked with at the end of the year. The experience will stay with me forever I’m sure and the opportunity to complete my OCN Mentoring qualification with ReachOut! was fantastic. The skills I learnt served me well on my Erasmus Year Abroad (a compulsory part of my French and Linguistics degree) as I ended up teaching 10 year olds in France.
One of the reasons I think students are so great as ReachOut! volunteers is because we are young and able to connect well with the pupils. More importantly though, I found that as a ReachOut! volunteer I was the first person the young people met who had been to university. Some of them hadn’t realised there was a university right across the road, let alone know someone who had been! So to be broadening their horizons and introducing them to the prospect of higher education was something I felt really quite proud of.”
We ran a two hour session once a week, the first hour being sports focussed (the girls we worked with were so competitive!) and the second hour being one-to-one mentoring. My mentee was a keen writer so we focussed on her literacy skills and later, on her numeracy skills. It was a great feeling knowing that I was able to help a young person develop and grow personally over the course of the year, particularly on the run-up to leaving her beloved primary school and moving on to the big world of secondary school!
I thoroughly enjoyed my time as a ReachOut! mentor and was quite sad to say bye to the girls I’d worked with at the end of the year. The experience will stay with me forever I’m sure and the opportunity to complete my OCN Mentoring qualification with ReachOut! was fantastic. The skills I learnt served me well on my Erasmus Year Abroad (a compulsory part of my French and Linguistics degree) as I ended up teaching 10 year olds in France.
One of the reasons I think students are so great as ReachOut! volunteers is because we are young and able to connect well with the pupils. More importantly though, I found that as a ReachOut! volunteer I was the first person the young people met who had been to university. Some of them hadn’t realised there was a university right across the road, let alone know someone who had been! So to be broadening their horizons and introducing them to the prospect of higher education was something I felt really quite proud of.”
Friday, 4 November 2011
Top Boy - oh so predictable, but realistic?
I was informed yesterday that as a charity worker aiming to help disadvantaged young people in Hackney I MUST watch the final episode of Channel 4’s Top Boy last night. With no time to catch up on previous episodes I whizzed through the video clips on the C4 website to get up to speed and the first thing that struck me was how much Ra'Nell and Gem, the unfortunate and gullible 13 year old school boys, reminded me of some of the children at the ReachOut! Academy - they looked like them, behaved like them and even talked like them – no one could fault the actors for being unrealistic.
The storyline was fairly predictable for a TV drama (Dushane, a disillusioned 20-something feels his only chance at a decent life is to deal drugs, he takes advantage of vulnerable teenagers, draws them into trouble, deal goes bad and someone gets shot) –that’s just good TV, but I'm not trying to belittle it. The stark reality is that young people in Hackney are exposed to gang culture, violence and drugs on a regular basis through the news, playground and estate gossip, older siblings and perhaps even directly themselves, with the scary effect that they have become desensitized to it all and perhaps even accepted it as just another part of life.
Perhaps for me, the saddest moment of the series was at the start, when Dushane convinces himself that he has no hope of a future that doesn’t involve crime. It echoed comments from some of our ReachOut! kids who often don't expect to do well at school, land a good (or any) job and struggle to see the point of working hard because it won’t change anything anyway; they’ve grown up in Hackney and feel that Hackney is what has determined their identity.
Top Boy should raise the question for all of us – how can we (yes you too) convince our young people that they can break the trends of unemployment and crime and not choose (yes, as they say in Dangerous Minds – you always have a choice) a life where violence and drugs are all too prevalent? What are we doing to help?
Drama and actors aside, Top Boy is a representation of a youth culture that has become famously associated with the area of Hackney. While we need to acknowledge the existence of such a culture, it is crucial that we address it too. Our work at ReachOut! strives to do just that….
Frances Blackwell
The storyline was fairly predictable for a TV drama (Dushane, a disillusioned 20-something feels his only chance at a decent life is to deal drugs, he takes advantage of vulnerable teenagers, draws them into trouble, deal goes bad and someone gets shot) –that’s just good TV, but I'm not trying to belittle it. The stark reality is that young people in Hackney are exposed to gang culture, violence and drugs on a regular basis through the news, playground and estate gossip, older siblings and perhaps even directly themselves, with the scary effect that they have become desensitized to it all and perhaps even accepted it as just another part of life.
Perhaps for me, the saddest moment of the series was at the start, when Dushane convinces himself that he has no hope of a future that doesn’t involve crime. It echoed comments from some of our ReachOut! kids who often don't expect to do well at school, land a good (or any) job and struggle to see the point of working hard because it won’t change anything anyway; they’ve grown up in Hackney and feel that Hackney is what has determined their identity.
Top Boy should raise the question for all of us – how can we (yes you too) convince our young people that they can break the trends of unemployment and crime and not choose (yes, as they say in Dangerous Minds – you always have a choice) a life where violence and drugs are all too prevalent? What are we doing to help?
Drama and actors aside, Top Boy is a representation of a youth culture that has become famously associated with the area of Hackney. While we need to acknowledge the existence of such a culture, it is crucial that we address it too. Our work at ReachOut! strives to do just that….
Frances Blackwell
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
What makes a mentor?
My first experience of anything like mentoring was far from formal. When I was in year three my patron saint was a lovely year six girl with a brown bob and a red puffa jacket. She taught me how to French plait my hair and that boys are only horrible because girls are really scary.
When I was in year six myself I was hustled into “mentoring” a year three kid, Priyan, who was struggling with reading. A few times a week, for that year, I would proudly march off to the playing field with a book wedged under my arm, hunt down a reluctant Priyan and help him tortuously pick his way through Biff Chip and Kipper for half an hour.
A few years ago, in my hometown supermarket I bumped into a grown-up Priyan; he grinned at me then shot off as if he still expected me to give pursuit. At least he remembered me!
This summer at the end of a long day in a failing Tanzanian school a boy approached me with a question. With only weeks left until his finals he still couldn’t get his head around wavelength and frequency; his only teacher was in hospital and his parents didn’t understand the language of the textbook.
And so what keeps me coming back? Because that moment when everything slotted into place and his eyes lit up was a total gift. Because what comes around really goes around. Whether its two hours a week for a full year, a couple of months or the length of one conversation, whether it’s through a formal scheme or a playground friendship, everyone deserves positive mentoring experiences, even if they don’t always define them that way....
Liz White
ReachOut! Club mentor
Friday, 7 October 2011
Mayor's recent aims reiterate ReachOut!'s core vaules
Boris Johnson has echoed Nick Clegg’s recent comments about the need for more government funded projects across London to tackle emerging problems that have shaken the city over the last year. After months of government cuts, riots and protests, it seems that the coalition is finally taking note of the need for more schemes like ReachOut!’s mentoring projects, to provide role models and support for children in some of London’s most deprived boroughs.
In his speech at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester this week, Boris said:
"Instead of washing their hands of young people having a hard time in school, these clubs will instill a firm sense of purpose, focus and motivation. Instilling discipline and giving young people positive role models and structure can have an amazing effect."
These comments show real commitment by the Mayor of London to our objectives here at ReachOut! – to provide positive role models to set examples of fairness, self-control, good judgement and staying power whilst promoting leadership, trust and responsibility in our young people. This also proves the relevance and necessity of the projects in the current political and social climate.
The ReachOut! Club (formerly the Midweek Mentoring Project) is due to restart at the beginning of November. The project places university and sixth form students as mentors to year 6 pupils in schools in Hackney and Tower Hamlets. Throughout the academic year the mentors provide individual academic support to their mentee, as well as encouraging and inspiring them, at an after school club once a week. The ReachOut! Club is just one of the many projects the charity runs for its young people.
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