MENTORING

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121 Mentoring Session Through building a healthy relationship, where trust is a priority, the young person is given the opportunity to see what a transformed life looks like. Often times, particularly for CYP that have experienced a level of trauma, it's essential to see true success before they believe it's possible for them too. 

Together they will explore, build on and prepare their goals and aspirations, the fears and boundaries that have so far held them, and practically work on what it looks like for them to transition through to adulthood from a lifestyle of negative patterns and behaviours to conscious, contributing members of society, before the justice system teaches them a lesson no child should have to learn. 

These weekly sessions take place in the evening and weekends in recognition of this being the most vulnerable times for many young people we work with. 

A report of the session is completed and sent to a designated person after each visit.

 When living in a country who's cultural identity is different from your own, it can leave you with a sense of isolation, until those differences are celebrated and encouraged enough to be made a priority throughout the daily journey of life.

Some of the team at BlindedFaith, are aware of what it feels like to go to the normal everyday shops and there's, for example, are no hair products for the texture of hair you have or there's a section 10th of the size of the other isle, allocated at the rear end of the store. Because the experiences of life is so easily available through the lens of another culture, we as the adults providing the nurturing and safe environment have to have a level of intentionality to the cultural development and experiences of those in our care.

Culture and Food
The flavours and techniques of cooking and enjoying Caribbean and African food have long been used as ways to bond people together.
We have access to community groups that run Caribbean cooking session. They also sell food; we could take the young people to experience dishes that they may not have experienced before.
Knowing which shops to go and how to pick out the traditional foods when they are ripe and ready to eat is another element of learning we can provide.

Culture and Health
We can discover together products and styles that best suit their type of hair and skin.
Options for them to learn the basics of looking after their own hair and skin. Teaching the young people the basics of self care will help them see value within themselves. We have access to individuals that have taken on young adults as apprentices in this field if that was an opportunity they wanted to go toward future goals.

Culture and Business
Welcoming our young people into the world of business through bringing them to marketing and product development meetings.
Finding out what they enjoy doing, and supporting them to resource and start a mini enterprise project that can be ran out of the contacts we have in the local cultural groups will widen and utilise their skills, demonstrate how to build healthy working relationships and passionate business ideas.
Meeting individuals and group leaders to speak to and interview their journey of success; from creating and casting the vision, to first steps, marketing strategies that did and didn't work, and how they sustain their business as a BME business owner.

Culture and Faith
Different cultures express Faith in different ways, giving young people the environment to understand and express their faith surrounding by people of a similar culture validates their own inquisitiveness around the topic of faith. For those young people that communicate an interest, just as any topic, we can support them to become involved in a way that lines up with there values.

Culture and The Arts
We have access to opportunities of learning Caribbean style instruments such as bongo drums and steel pans.
Recording studios can be utilised through an organisation set up to engage and introduce young people to that skill. We have members of our team who have a vast experience of writing and collaborations in music and song writing.

Culture and History
Celebrating elements of the journey of multiple generations of heritage, their influences around the world, inventions and stumbling blocks are widely available during BLACK HISTORY MONTH. There are groups of people that plan activities, educational and social to bring awareness and entertainment around the topic of Black History.

Culture and Community
Within many of the above categories, the young people will often be exploring these areas within small groups of the community, thus developing a social network of multiple generations.
Carnivals and festivals can often be a space where many of these cultural areas fuse together in celebration.

Our lived experience mentors, are a group of experienced, emotionally equipped and engaging people, ready to walk with any young person throughout their journey of discovering themselves and their world.

Whether we see it or not, or know the connotations to why often times through media and society at large those within the black and ethnic communities can often have a negative stereotype associated with them; for those young people under the same ethnic umbrella to be able to work with men and women from this culture, succeeding and investing back into the community is a positive and potentially prospective changing opportunity. It's with this added element that we carry out activities and opportunities mentioned.