ReachOut are a strategic partner for schools. Through after school mentoring sessions across London and Manchester, we build socio-emotional skills that transform outcomes for 9-14 year olds. We exist because not all children have the opportunity to just ‘pick-up’ socio-emotional skills. The 9-14 age bracket is an especially crucial juncture in childhood development, so we focus our efforts on helping children in this range.
Within this bracket, we further focus our efforts on helping young people constrained by circumstance. Our programme delivery is informed by an evidence based curriculum and delivered through collective mentorship with trained practitioners and volunteer mentors. This combines positive peer support with supportive adult role models, allowing us to have the most impact.
The young people we work with are referred to us by their school and are often students who want to increase their social and academic confidence, focus on development of key socio-emotional skills achieve improvements in behaviour and attendance. Our trained project leaders and volunteer mentors act as role-models, working with mentees to understand their goals and how they can achieve them.
We work in a true partnership with schools. ReachOut provide weekly updates and hold termly meetings with the school to ensure the development of each young person on the programme. Our mentoring sessions are delivered on the school site and we recruit, train, and vet all ReachOut staff and volunteers who take part. The commitment needed from the school is to refer young people, support with attendance and provide ReachOut with information on the young people for them to be supported in the best way possible through the sessions.
On this page, you can find all the information you need about what a ReachOut project could look like in your school.
You can scroll down to explore, or click the links below to jump to what you’re looking for.
Socio-emotional skills are foundational skills for young people. Research has shown that the development of these skills at a young age, when the brain is in a key stage of its development, is one of the strongest indicators of a young person’s success at school and happiness in life.
They’re foundational skills, but we believe they’re often taken for granted because it’s assumed that everyone has equal access to developing them – and that’s not true.
Just like with Maths or English, developing these skills depends on a wide range of factors and can be influenced, formally or informally by access to a range of different learning opportunities.
That’s where we come in. In partnership with the Centre for Youth Impact, we’ve developed an engaging, evidence based curriculum to support the young people we work with.
Reliably meeting commitments and fulfilling obligations.
Relating to others with compassion, acceptance and understanding
Planning, strategising and implementing complex tasks including critical thinking, goal setting and responsible decision making.
The ability to take action, sustain motivation and persevere through challenges.
Leadership, and the ability to collaborate, communicate and coordinate with others.
Being aware of, naming, understanding and constructively handling positive and negative emotions.
ReachOut run two different types of mentoring projects depending on your school:
ReachOut Club projects take place in primary schools with young people aged 9-11.
ReachOut Academy projects take place in high schools with young people aged 11-14.
As part of our projects, we also work with corporate partners to run workplace experience visits – giving mentees the opportunity to learn about different career paths and talk to new role models.
In the past, we’ve taken mentees to meet the hospitality team at Dakota Hotels, visit the studios of Bloomberg’s morning news show Daybreak, learn from employees at Zurich Insurance, and more. The visits are a key part of our work preparing our mentees for their futures.
"The opportunity for students to visit a place they would never see and get them involved in activities they would never normally do was very beneficial."
We’re proud of the impact we have in our partner schools and for our mentees and mentors. Take a look at what some of them have said about their experience with ReachOut.
Some names and personal details have been changed.
If you’re interested in us running a ReachOut project at your school, or if you’ve got any questions about what we do and how we can work with you, please let us know! Just fill in the form below and one of our team will be in touch!
“At first, I was really hesitant to take on the Project Leader role, despite having mentored with ReachOut. However, with the support of the team I’ve really developed my skills. For example, at the Mentee Graduation, I stood up in front of 200 people and presented an award which is something I would never ever have been able to have done before, and isn’t an opportunity I could gain in my other situations.”
Amy McCutcheon, Project Leader at ReachOut Academy, Dean Trust Ardwick, Manchester.
“Being able to spend the summer working at Rede Partners, was an amazing experience. Whether it was working in HR or Finance, I learned so much about the world of private equity, made great connections with fantastic people and I got to learn first-hand what it would be like to work there! I really believe that I can go onto build the career I want now I’ve been a part for a workplace for real”
Victor Adekunle, 18 years old, ReachOut Ambassador, London
“When I first my mentee, she was very reluctant to participate in the sessions. Now, I see a completely different person! Her confidence has grown and she is happy to join in! She still has some self-doubt when it comes to academic work, but that’s what I hope to help her overcome, because she is a very bright person!
Through mentoring, I’ve learnt I’m a lot more patient than I realised. There will be days where she refuses to participate and those are the days that I really see the importance of the character strengths, for both the mentees and the mentors. It also makes it easier for the mentee to understand the character strengths, when I use them myself”
Myrtle, ReachOut Club mentor at Tufnell Primary School, London
“There are more distractions than ever outside of school, and the commitment of our students to attend ReachOut sessions is testament to the value they place on the relationships they foster there, and the challenge and enjoyment they provide.
ReachOut’s focus on communication skills and character development has become an important aspect of our provision of support for these students. The opportunity to relate to a positive role- model other than their usual teachers is key to the programme’s impact, and the evidence of this has been seen in the students’ attendance, resilience and to their overall progress across all the subjects in the school.”
Thomas Janvrin, Assistant Vice Principal at the Petchey Academy London
