Glasgow Mentoring by Jem Fraser
June 20, 2012 
2 Comments
When Lynda from the University of Strathclyde first asked for volunteers for a research Project to provide adult mentors for senior pupils in a secondary school in a socially deprived area in Glasgow it felt like something I could do. I was only working part time and the rest of the week I took part in the Learning in Later Life classes at the University and had time out with my grandchildren.
My background was in Science, Education and Museums. When I went along to hear about the Project there were 20 volunteers, 17 women and 3 men, all retired. The Project leader told us a little more about the Project which basically was to research the potential to give the pupils more confidence in themselves and in their abilities to get into further education and a career by having a supportive adult available to talk to on a regular basis who was not their teacher or parent but who had been though University and had had a professional career. The mentor’s task would be to listen to their concerns, try to give them help from personal experience and advise them in a supportive way.
I was paired with a young man in his final school year who had not done very well academically in the previous year because by his own admission he spent too much time playing computer games!
Our meetings were approximately one hour or less every week for six months and the conversation varied from his subjects and how he was doing, to homework and how he made time and space for it, his ambitions (he wanted to do Biochemistry at University), the alternatives to University, his family and friends and how he spent his spare time. I told him a bit about myself as well and we seemed to have a good relationship in which I listened to him and vice versa.
However at his preliminary exams before his final external examination he did not do well. He tried to hide his disappointment during our sessions and told me how he was taking extra classes and that if he did not get into University he could still get qualifications through a Further Education College.
I was vexed for him as I felt his seeming lack of ambition was something that we had been trying to counter in the Project. Alternatively if he was not an able student a College environment might be more supportive for him. Subsequently what we did was practice strategies for exams as I felt he had a lot of knowledge but struggled with the exam environment. This seemed to help and we practised how to get ready for exams, how to read the paper carefully and how to time the answers to the paper. We talked about panic reactions to questions, fear of failure and how to calm oneself.
This all sounds straightforward as I write but it was new to him and he seemed to take it on board. I am not sure just how much help I was to him other than being someone who was there every week solely to meet him and was interested in how he was. Perhaps that was enough! He did eventually go to College and is doing well.
The Project is being evaluated by the University through interviews with mentees and mentors and through weekly reports of mentors’ meetings.
It is important that volunteerism is seen and experimented as a educative process and that the values carried on through volunteeerism can reach the future generations. Therefore, it is of great importance that children are trained through art to these value because they will be the adults of tomorrow and those who will run the world of to-morrow.. The fact that art could be such a vehicle of education and transformation is a good new, we believe in the strength and potentiallity of art with respect to this objective. Another world is possible, through art and children! Thus, volunteerism has to have the children as target groups! Gianni, Aziz, Catalunya
Gianni, Aziz, Catalunya
Our favourite is the intergenerational mentoring project of the Strathclyde University of Glasgow. While in many European countries we notice an increasing number of unemployed young people. This fact marks an explosive social problem. The Strathclyde University deals with this problem in a particular way. The mentoring program look after the deprived young people, often with migration background, who often fail the aim of our school systems and professional education systems because their potential are not mentioned and their facilities are not enough supported.
This mentoring program picks up that problem in a remarkable way. Because it supports the potential of young people, who otherwise would not have schoolish and professionally specialized. The results are that young people are able to reach schoolish and professional degrees according to their possibilities and their social integration is promoted. On the other hand the resources of the elderly people are respected and appreciated.
This is an extraordinary example for the intergenerational work ink mutual for the future.
Bärbel and Rolf-Peter König, Vile ev.
Bärbel and Rolf-Peter König, Vile ev.