Volunteer Mentor

Mentoring is a service within Depaul which supports young people to become more independent, to learn skills that they will use when move on from our services. For example this could be cooking or budgeting skills. The young people using the mentoring service will already have goals they would like to work on, these goals will all be productive for independence such as getting out into the community and building social networks.

The mentor will meet with their mentee once a week for up to three hours at a time and complete an activity. The volunteer mentors will always be supported by the volunteer mentor co-ordinator.

To provide mentoring support to people from a variety of backgrounds who are making the transition to independence. To deliver fun and engaging mentoring sessions to Depaul clients. The focus will be based on health & wellbeing, skills development, creativity and community involvement:

• To meet with your mentee for up to three hours a week and complete fun but productive sessions with them working on their already identified goals
• To be a listening ear for the mentee
• To contact your mentee weekly to arrange sessions
• To contact the Volunteer and Mentor Co-ordinator after the sessions by either text message, email or phone call. This is logging the sessions and keeping a record of time and activity spent with the mentee
• To email the expense record to the Volunteer and Mentor Co-ordinator to claim back expenses
• To attend one support session every eight weeks with the Volunteer and Mentor Co-ordinator
• To attend volunteer forums which take place once every three months, volunteer forums are a great way to get together and discuss our experiences. We often have guest speakers from other organisations.

Skills

• Volunteers should have an understanding of the issues faced by disadvantaged young people such as homelessness
• The ability to work in a non-judgemental manner is also essential
• Good communication, listening and IT skills are important to this role