Kate volunteered with ClementJames during our Adult Mentoring programme. With a professional background in the charity sector, Kate utilised her public speaking and mentoring skills to give back to the community.
“I’ve worked for the past 20+ years in the not-for-profit, private and public sectors. My experience is predominantly working for both small and large, national and international charities. For the past ten years I’ve worked at a senior level, mostly focused on providing services for children, young people and families. An element of business development and raising money to enable the provision of these services has always been a key part of my role, as well as engaging with a wide range of people through public speaking.
I decided to go freelance last year so I currently have more flexibility with my time. I saw a post on LinkedIn from Dami, the CEO of ClementJames, who I know from working at Mentor UK previously, which was advertising the Adult Mentoring programme. I’ve done lots of mentoring and public speaking, so thought that it would fit my skill set and could add value to members of the community who could do with support in this area. I’m also a proud Londoner and from West London, so I was keen to give back to the community, especially when many local services are being cut and the need is greater than ever due to the cost of living crisis.
I was a volunteer mentor as part of the Adult Mentoring programme that took place over four half days in April. I was assigned a mentee, who I worked with over the week to build their confidence in order to deliver a short speech on the Friday.
It was such a heartwarming and inspiring experience. The mentees did so amazingly well and went on such a journey over the course of the programme. Every one of them did such a brilliant job delivering their speeches. They were all different as they had their own stories to tell or passions to express. All of the mentees said how valuable the programme had been for them to build their confidence in an area which many of them feared. They all felt proud of what they had achieved. As a mentor, I felt it was such a worthwhile use of my time to see the positive impact on the mentees. The programme was also brilliantly organised and facilitated by Phoebe and Danny from ClementJames. I would highly recommend getting involved to any potential mentors who could spare the time, especially employees working for companies who offer volunteer days.”