Making a choice to mentor a child for a year in the hope of improving their life chances and changing their perspective is a leap into the unknown.
It is a process facilitated by Chance UK, a charity that matches up mentors with children aged 5-11 and supports them as they build a transformative relationship.
It seeks to improve the lives of individuals and communities through one-to-one engagement, and its latest ‘Leap’ campaign is looking to increase the number of participants.
According to National Development Manager Orli Gorenski the charity has historically been well supported.
“We started the campaign on the first of July. Until about four years ago we had no problems recruiting mentors, it was mostly word of mouth and we would have people coming out of the door,” she says.
However, the economic context and ambitions for its expansion has led the organisation to this latest recruitment drive.
Ms Gorenski explains the reasoning behind the timing and concept of the campaign, saying “we came up with the Leap campaign, because when children and mentors graduate at the end of their year together, we often have pictures of them leaping for joy, and that is where it came from.
“I think it symbolises taking a leap, for all of us. For the children that get involved in the programme it’s a big leap; they are meeting a complete stranger at first and putting their faith in them. It’s also a leap for the families, for the parents, to have us involved in their lives and being prepared to trust us and let us in.
“And obviously for the mentor it is quite a big leap. A lot of our mentors haven’t worked in any way with children or don’t have much contact with children. It is a leap for them, not knowing how they will change throughout the year and what affect the programme will have on them.”
Over the next few weeks Chance UK is hoping people will support the cause and take pictures of themselves, their friends and their colleagues jumping into the air and posting them on facebook and twitter alongside #ChanceUKLeap.
The goal is to bring in as many new mentors as possible as well as raising the profile of the organisation, which is still in the process of growing and branching out into other areas of the UK.
It began 20 years ago in Islington and was founded by a former policeman who was alarmed at the rapidly decreasing age of the offenders he was dealing with and wanted to break the cycle.
This is achieved through early intervention and a solution focussed approach, which Ms Gorenski says “basically means that although we know that children are facing difficult issues at school and at home, we don’t focus on those issues. We are not constantly talking about those problems but instead we really try and focus on the skills and the attributes of the child - the things that they are good at, the things within their behaviour that are positive. That’s not to say that we don’t notice behaviour, but it is just dealt with in a different way rather than saying ‘don’t do that’.
“Often these children are talked about in a very negative way, either to their face or in front of them and they start to believe that they are bad children. We try to disassociate the behaviour from the child. So although a child might be behaving badly, they are not a bad person.
“There are lots of approaches associated with the solution focused technique and problem free time is big part of that. A lot of our children have quite complicated lives and just helping them to be a child again by allowing them not to think about their problems for two to three hours that day is so important.”
The early intervention approach is also central to Chance UK’s philosophy as, according to Ms Gorenski, it maximises the impact of the scheme and potentially prevents significant individual, social and financial costs.
“For a child, primary school is a time when they are growing up and there is a lot of change and that is a time when our programme can really have an effect,” she says.
“Their horizons can be expanded by simply taking them to a museum. Also, the effect that it has on the family, if we can come in early and support them is huge. It can improve the whole family network. If a young child is causing a lot of problems in the family home, for whatever reason, by intervening early and helping to improve the child’s behaviour it then improves the whole functioning of the home.
“Also in terms of their brain development, the sooner we can start talking to children as human beings and saying to them that they are good people, the better. By intervening early the child can really start believing the story of their lives that the child and the mentor are trying to form together.
“Finally, from a social costs perspective the earlier you intervene the better. If a child is excluded it costs something like £25,000 a year to have them in special provision or something else. It is a huge amount of money and if we can stop that happening we are preventing a lot of public money being spent.”
Changing the path of a child in this way is the challenging but immensely rewarding process that Chance UK is trying to involve many more volunteers in through its Leap campaign.
“The positives far outweigh the negatives,” Ms Groneski says.
“You get to have an effect on a child’s life. You get to see a child grow and know that is inspired by your time with them. You get to explore London and be creative. It can also help if you want to go into working with children, or for people who are fostering or adopting. It is a really great way to learn as much as you can about how to be very positive with a child.
“People get confidence from it, a sense of achievement and they feel fulfilled. They feel that they have really done something worthwhile. The children we work with are incredible. They are so much fun.”
This is why the charity hopes people will take that leap that could change a child’s life, and possibly theirs as well.