Inspire, Motivate & Engage (IME) is a London-based training company that gives back 5% of their annual revenue to charity. One of their charitable programmes is the Career Mentoring Scheme for young, unemployed people across the UK. For the mentors, they provide accredited Level 4 management training, which is delivered via aNewSpring as a blended training programme.
The problem
IME had a platform themselves, but it was a challenge to keep investing in it and maintaining it. IME would rather spend their energy on building and maintaining the content. Also, their own platform neither allowed social learning, nor help with knowledge retention.
The concept
IME wants to deliver a great training programme for their mentors so value is delivered to both their mentors and the mentees. The training programme consists of several different learning modalities.
The result
Thanks to aNewSpring, IME can focus on smooth programme delivery for their mentors and mentees. It will be great if more young people find work as a result of the mentoring programme. In the next iteration, social learning and knowledge retention will also be implemented.
Claire, what is the Career Mentoring scheme about?
This is a career mentoring programme that has helped 400 young people go through 6,400 hours of mentoring over the last 6 years and has secured full-time employment for 120 young people to date.
And who are the people going through this programme? E.g. can you talk about your clients?
There are two types of clients here. First, there are the mentees—young people between 18 and 24 years old who are currently unemployed. Then, there are the mentors. These include people from organisations such as Legal & General, SGN and the Makers Academy. This is part of their leadership programme, which is not just for new managers but also for senior staff. IME provides a safe environment to learn and develop new skills in a unique way.
That’s quite impressive. What does a typical programme look like?
The blend consists of online learning, a forum, live webinar sessions and Face-2-Face meetings with the mentors. The typical duration is 3 months, but this can sometimes extend to a year. Mentors come from all walks of life and can be people who just went through the programme themselves or people who have many years of work experience. They are chosen based on their right values and attitudes towards mentoring. Mentors have to be reliable, want to make a difference, be solution-oriented, be open to challenge and non-judgemental. IME is careful that the career aspiration of the mentee is matched by the mentor, that is, the mentor has really gone through the same experience themselves.
If people are excited about getting involved in such a programme, what should they do?
If someone is interested to become a mentor and learn in a socially responsible way, simply contact ime@inspiremotivateandengage.org.
