Helpful contacts and FAQs

Your school is responsible for selection and they choose students who they think will get the most out of the opportunity to have a mentor.

The program takes place at school and is one hour per week during class in terms 2 and 3.

Our advice is to talk to the staff at school, your year head or wellbeing advisors and ask them any questions about this and any other concerns you have.

The mentors are volunteers from the community who have some time free each week to dedicate to mentoring a young person in a nearby high school. As a volunteer they are unpaid to do this role. They have chosen to get working with children and police checks as well as being fully trained in youth mentoring in order to be part of this program. Men and women of all ages sign up to become mentors, but they must be over 21.

Every session is run by a Program Counsellor (PC) who is a professional skilled at matching young people with mentors. During one of the early sessions the PC will run a specific game to help with this process as well as asking you afterwards if there were any people you specifically thought you had a bit of a connection with – and you’ll get to write these down. PCs will also use information from your survey and the mentors’ surveys to further help the process to pair you up with the most suitable mentor.

Safety and having a great experience is most important to us and if for any reason you are not enjoying or feeling comfortable in the program, you should talk to the Program Counsellor who is running the program and they will help with you this.

We understand that life happens and there might be reasons why you can’t make it some weeks. If you are absent from school, your school will advise us so you don’t have to worry about that – usually they can tell us in time so that we can advise the mentor that you are away.

It’s really up to you. We provide a handbook that you and your mentor can work through or you can simply choose to come along and talk about what’s important to you. There is no right or wrong way to do this, it’s led by you and the guide book is there to help if you can't think of anything you want to discuss that week.

We finish up with a Graduation session and you will receive a certificate for completing the program. There is an opportunity for you and your mentor to thank one another and share your feedback about the program. We love to get your feedback as we are keen to develop and improve the program to make it as useful as possible to other young people like you.