Youth mentoring program

Young people making decisions about study and work are mostly doing it from a very short list of jobs they have actually seen someone like them do. There is a lot of quiet expertise in this community — nurses, tradespeople, engineers, teachers, people running their own businesses — and very little of it is visible to the people who would most benefit from seeing it.

This program is the simplest fix we can think of: introduce them to each other, one at a time.

Two kinds of match

General mentoring, for high school age — someone a bit further along who takes an interest, helps with decisions about subjects and study, and is a steady adult who is not a parent or a teacher.

Career mentoring, for university and TAFE students — matched with somebody already working in the field they are studying towards. Engineering student to engineer, nursing student to nurse. The value here is specific: what the work is actually like, which employers hire graduates, how to read a job ad, who to talk to, and an introduction when one is worth making. A coffee once a month and messages in between is enough.

How it would run

Matches made twice a year, in February and August. Mentors commit to a minimum of six months and get a short briefing before their first meeting. Both sides check in with the coordinator every couple of months, so a match that has gone quiet gets noticed rather than just ending.

Mentors working with anyone under 18 would need a current Working with Children Check. It is free for volunteers and we would walk people through it.

Honest status

An idea on the board. Nobody is matched, and there is no intake scheduled. The interest form below is how we find out whether there are enough mentors to make the first round work — there is no point matching twenty young people against four mentors.

What we need first

• A coordinator to run the intakes. Nothing happens without one
• Mentors, particularly in health, engineering, trades, finance and IT
• A simple written brief for mentors, so the first meeting is not a blank page
• The Working with Children Check process sorted before anyone is matched

What’s next after that

Career nights alongside the one-to-one matching, so mentees meet several people working in fields they are curious about rather than just their own mentor.