Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Forty firms in talks over youth mentoring project
Forty businesses are in discussions to help mentor young people in the city.
The firms have offered their services to the BREAKTHROUGH scheme, backed by DC Thomson.
The project, which was launched in September, aims to provide young people in the city with highlytrained volunteer mentors.
They will support young people who have experience in care or those who face difficulties because of their background. Alongside the 40 firms which have expressed an interest in supporting the programme, there have also been 170 applications from members of the public to become mentors.
Of those 170 applicants, 100 have attended information sessions and 45 have already had a “getting-toknow-you” i nterview with the BREAKTHROUGH team.
Susan Duncan, chief executive of BREAKTHROUGH, said: “We think that this will give us the number of mentors we need for Morgan Academy and St Paul’s RC Academy, with some spare, as we need a pool of mentors to select good matches from.
“We have met such an interesting array of people of all ages and stages and we are excited about the variety of mentor skills and life experiences that our pool of mentors will be able to offer our young people.
“It’s fantastic to see people from across the city coming together to support our young people, some of whom have had very challenging experiences themselves or have shared in those of others.”
It is intended that all eight of Dundee’s secondary schools will be involved in the programme by 2019.
The project’s senior schools coordinator, Rosie Ivins, previously told the Tele: “Our main priority is to provide support to young people, allowing them to build on their skills and boost their confidence. We want to show these young people that no matter what difficulties they may have faced in their life, that everybody can be somebody.” The project is funded by the Northwood Charitable Trust and supported by DC Thomson and Dundee City Council. It was inspired by MCR Pathways, a Glasgow charity which has developed a model of mentoring support that is impacting positively on young people.