For Mentors / Volunteers

All our DAY1 Mentors are volunteers; they are ordinary (actually quite extraordinary!) people who want to make a meaningful difference to young people’s lives. Through our Mentorship Programme, we are proud to have built a collaborative, supportive volunteer network, made up of inspiring individuals from all walks of life who bring unique experiences and perspectives to the role.

As a DAY1 Mentor, you will become a trusted adult role model and friend to a young person, offering them support, security and stability when they may be struggling to find this elsewhere. The DAY1 team carefully matches each Mentor with a young person through the programme, based on similar likes, interests, personalities and geographical location. You will help to nurture their growth by building their confidence, self-esteem and resilience, whilst supporting them to develop transferable work and life skills that will set them in the right direction for the future.

What does the role involve?

Once you have been paired with a young person, you will meet them outside the school environment once a week for a full year. It’s a serious commitment but it’s one that we’ve found works really well. A year gives you and your Mentee time to build that all important ingredient of any mentoring relationship – trust. It’s trust that gives your young person the safe space to try out new things, sometimes perhaps to falter, but then to learn ‘resilience’ and bounce back. Helping your young person build their ‘resilience’ is a core theme of your mentoring journey. Much of your training with the DAY1 team will focus on understanding resilience and how we can help our Mentees grow theirs. You’ll learn lots about your own resilience too and feedback from Mentors suggests that this is a theme directly relevant not only to living full personal lives but also to enhancing their work-place experiences too.

When you meet your young person, they will have the freedom to decide how they want to spend this time with you – whether that’s undertaking fun activities together, getting help with their CVs, college/job applications, setting up work experiences or simply just having a chat over a coffee. Our DAY1 Development Manager is there at the end of the phone to help support your mentoring journey in whatever way you need, while ongoing training and meetings with other Mentors throughout the year are a key part of that support. Each Mentor is also given an annual allowance per Mentee to cover the cost of these activities.

What are the benefits of becoming a DAY1 Mentor?

We hear it first hand from our team that becoming a DAY1 Mentor is an enjoyable, valuable and rewarding experience that above all, gives you the opportunity to help change a young person’s life. Many of the young people we help go on to become Mentors themselves, wanting to give back to the community and support young people in a similar situation to them.

Our Mentors often tell us how inspired they are by the young people they support. Building resilience is the key theme that runs through all our programmes, and Mentors can often learn from their Mentees too! Throughout the year, you will have the chance to further develop your own skills, which you can share and put into practice at our regular Mentor training sessions. These training sessions take place several times a year and are normally coordinated in groups of around 15 people. Whether you are parenting, running a business, managing a team or just seeking some self-awareness in your own personal life journey, our DAY1 Mentor training is open to all.

In addition to the 1-2-1 guidance from DAY1’s Development Manager and the regular team training evenings, we also provide a digital tool to support the sharing of information and facilitation of communication between Mentors themselves, as well as between Mentors and their Mentees. This is our ‘Mentornet’ platform, designed exclusively for DAY1. It’s easy to use from your mobile and we will provide you with full training on how to use the platform.

Child Protection

DAY1 has developed a bespoke Child Protection and Safeguarding training program in tandem with the Highland Child Protection Officer. This training is compulsory for Mentors, prioritising the safeguarding and mental wellbeing of young people, whilst teaching Mentors how to deal with different scenarios.

Recruitment process

We’re always looking for enthusiastic new Mentors to join our team, so you can apply any time you’re ready. We’ll work with you to arrange a suitable start date for meeting your young person, which will be completely flexible around you.

To apply to become a DAY1 Mentor, you can send an email directly or complete our online registration form by clicking the link below and following application instructions to be a mentor. This link is hosted by our partner software company, sfGMentorNet.

You will need to be over the age of 18 and able to offer dedicated time each week to spend with your Mentee. Our absolute priority is to safeguard the young people we support, and we ensure that thorough disclosure checks are carried out across all DAY1 staff and volunteers via Disclosure Scotland.

Once you have completed the online registration form, we will review your application and will be back in touch to invite you for a friendly face-to-face meeting.

“None of this would happen without our wonderful DAY1 Mentors. Indeed, DAY1 is as much a network of volunteers as it is an organisation and it is that network that creates the societal change we need. Every week, all over our communities, volunteer Mentors and their DAY1ers are meeting up to have fun, build trust, create focus and ultimately help the young folk discover the interests and direction they need to build positive contributing working lives.”

Ed Ley-Wilson,
Co-Founder of DAY1