From the minute I started at ReachOut, right through to today, I’ve felt supported and part of a community that cares. From support in the classroom, to help with university applications and finding a job, ReachOut has always gone above and beyond to support me and countless others.
We all know that children from ‘well-off’ backgrounds benefit from better opportunities; they generally have access to better education, more extracurricular programmes, as well as access to a wide range of people beyond their parents or teachers who can mentor and guide them.
For me and my friends who took part in ReachOut, it helped to level the playing field, providing us with those same opportunities. The effect of this can be seen through all the amazing things that some former mentees have gone on to do – they’re working in tech, law, and the media, all opportunities I don’t think we would have got if we didn’t attend ReachOut.
As a kid, you always have people who you look up to. Growing up in Hackney, I had some really positive role models and some who weren’t as positive. ReachOut was somewhere that reinforced the lessons from my positive role models and showed me an alternative to the latter.
The mentors on our programme put their faith in us, children society deemed likely to fail. Kids aren’t oblivious to the expectations held of them and having someone who believes in them and who has faith in them, is immensely important and helps to drive their willingness to do well.
Intelligence doesn’t automatically equal success and even bright children can take wrong turns. You need guidance and someone behind you to believe in you, which is why mentoring is so fundamental to a child’s life. Now that I’m an adult, I want to give back in any way I can to support those who are in a similar position to the one I found myself in growing up.
I’m not an anomaly, ReachOut is still having a huge impact on the lives of young people all these years later. Mentoring really works.” Boma Orubibi