Get ready to best support disadvantaged children and young people through mentoring

By the end of this stop, you will be able to:

  1. Define the term ‘building trust’ and explain how you can foster this as a mentor with the child or young person and parents and other stakeholders.
  2. Describe the importance of safeguarding and the steps you will take to safeguard children and young people.
  3. Characterise the term ‘provide support’ in your role as mentor and what it entails on a daily basis.
  4. Explain how a mentor can nurture the wellbeing of a child or young person.

What type of challenges are they facing?

Of course, every individual is different, and we will only paint a generic reality.

  • Approximately 20-25% of youth are suffering from mental health problems in the aftermath of COVID-19
  • The long-lasting trend of insufficient physical activity for 80% of adolescents puts the health and wellbeing of children and youth at serious risk

The following video will provide you with more in-depth ideas of the type of challenge faced by the children and young people who are benefiting from the Icehearts Finland programme.

Explore mentoring relationships

In this section, we will use four avatars to help you understand the characteristics of mentoring relationships.

These are composite personas of children and young people (Icehearts mentees) - we have named them Ali, Beyani, Carlos and Dmitri.

Each Avatar story is centred on one of the four core learning areas, as follows:

(Adapted from The New Zealand Youth Mentoring Network, 2018)

To make the most of each of this learning case study, we invite you to follow these steps as a learning process:

  1. Read (to understand the situation),
  2. Think (about what you would have done),
  3. Watch (tips and tricks from an experienced mentor),
  4. Reflect on what you have learned.

STORY №1 - Building Trust – Ali’s story

Description: Has trust issues. Very shy. She is one of twins – her sister is much more outgoing and has so many friends. Her sister is in the same school. She loves creating TikTok videos on make-up. She does not like her hair. Ali has made friends with some people online – they are from the UK and seem to be very nice.

Need: Not to be always seen as the same as her sister. Ali would like to have enough money to buy any clothes that she likes.

Insight: She is worried about her appearance, and this worry takes up a lot of her time.

THINK:

  1. What’s the problem?
  2. How does the child feel about the problem?
  3. What should the mentor do about the problem?
  4. How would the mentor follow up on the problem?
  5. Who can help the mentor to solve the issue?

WATCH: What would an experienced Icehearts Finland mentor do? Tips and tricks by Nelli Niemelä.

REFLECT: What was similar in my response, and what was new for me?

STORY №2 - Safeguarding – Beyani’s story

Description: Family emigrated from Nigeria when she was five. She is one of four children. Her father died when she was 4. Her mother works as a Special Needs Assistant in the local primary school. She loves her family.

Needs: To plan her future – what she will do after school.

Insight: She is very ambitious and hard-working. She finds it hard if she does not do well on exams and gets very angry when this happens and finds it hard to cope. She cries herself to sleep when this happens.

THINK:

  1. What’s the problem?
  2. How does the child feel about the problem?
  3. What should the mentor do about the problem?
  4. How would the mentor follow up on the problem?
  5. Who can help the mentor to solve the issue?

WATCH: What would an experienced Icehearts mentor do? Tips and tricks by Nelli Niemelä.

REFLECT: What was similar in my response, and what was new for me?

STORY №3 - Nurturing Wellbeing – Carlos’ story

Description: Middle child of five; his older brothers are great at sport and really good at school. He struggles at school. Very shy and not very confident. He sometimes does things in school that get him in trouble with teachers. He doesn’t care as he just wants to be popular.

Needs: Would like to be good at something and that everyone would admire him for that one thing.

Insight: Loves hands-on subjects, hates having to learn stuff by heart. Really bored at school. Hanging around with boys who have been in trouble with the police. His Dad doesn’t know that, though.

THINK:

  1. What’s the problem?
  2. How does the child feel about the problem?
  3. What should the mentor do about the problem?
  4. How would the mentor follow up on the problem?
  5. Who can help the mentor to solve the issue?

WATCH: What would an experienced Icehearts Finland mentor do? Tips and tricks by Miika Niemelä.

REFLECT: What was similar in my response, and what was new for me?

STORY №4: Providing Support – Dara’s Story

Description: One of six children; single-parent family; family on social welfare; living in social housing on the edge of the town. Dara is 14 years old. He loves sport and is really good at football. He is really close to his grandmother, who lives next door. She is the best.

Needs: To get space and some quiet. He finds that doing training really helps him to think and to relax.

Insight: He knows that he needs to work really hard at school to have an exciting life. He is envious of people in his class who have money. He wants to get a part-time job to help him to do more stuff.

THINK:

  1. What’s the problem?
  2. How does the child feel about the problem?
  3. What should the mentor do about the problem?
  4. How would the mentor follow up on the problem?
  5. Who can help the mentor to solve the issue?

WATCH: What would an experienced Icehearts Finland mentor do? Tips and tricks by Miika Niemelä.

REFLECT: What was similar in my response, and what was new for me?

How is Icehearts Europe helping me to serve disadvantaged children and young people?

Though the model is to be adapted to your own context and in cooperation with the operating grassroots sport organisation which recruited you, Icehearts Europe has been working to provide you with some key elements. Here are the answers to the most frequently asked questions:

Additional Resources

Should you want to go further and learn more about how to best support underprivileged children and young people, we suggest you have a look at the following resources:

  1. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
  2. ECMI Flensburg - Video on Minority Rights
  3. Anthony Schullo - TEDxNorthCentralCollege - Video on awareness towards gender and sexual minorities.
    Pink and Blue: Communicating Gender to Children
  4. The Atlantic - Video on Antiracism “How to talk to kids about race”
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