Andrea

About the blogger:
A mother of three lively children who after 12 years at home decided to go back to the world of work – this is how Andrea introduces herself!  Andrea graduated from Manchester University with a degree in Politics and History. After a period of temping, she worked full time for a local manufacturer and then decided to work part time for a local charity.

In 2002 she decided that this was not fulfilling enough for her and went for careers advice. Their suggestion was to work with young adults and that she become a volunteer mentor.  

Soon she approached the local high school and was promptly given 5 challenging boys. The project soon grew as she started recruiting volunteers, trained and assigned them pupils in school. In October 2004, Mentor Link was registered as a charity. She now has 50+ volunteers working in 5 schools in Worcestershire and enough funds to fund her position full time and employ two part time members of staff.

Mentor Link has enjoyed increased publicity in local newspapers, presentations and radio. They won the Learning and Skills Council Award for the Education and Business Link and has also exhibited their story as part of an interactive maze in the Tate Modern as part of the National Lottery 10th anniversary celebrations.

Andrea really believes that mentoring makes a real difference to those who genuinely want it. One of the first things that mentoring helps with is self confidence without which it is hard to achieve personal goals and full potential. She also gets a great enjoyment out of meeting and helping young adults face very difficult home lives. Though she would like to be able to offer their services across the county, she remains dedicated to sustained but gradual expansion as the funding remains an issue.

Her list of interests includes any family activity, playing badminton (not to win but to enjoy the game) and chatting to friends. She hates-violence, Big Brother, football, soap operas, creepy crawlies and snobs!

She hopes that the India journey will give her valuable insight into how to both engage and work with sections of the community that are traditionally hard to engage. She looks forward to meeting other team members and talking about their projects and how they started them. Plus she hopes to get a real insight into another culture that package holidays do not provide!

Read this blogger's entries