Young Star Mentoring is a charity that supports and mentors young people. We have signed to the Care Leaver Covenant as a statement of our continued commitment to support care leavers.
Young Star Mentoring works with care leavers on a training programme directed by our three core principles which are Activity, adventure, and connection to build essential skills in teamwork, personal resilience, teaching them to endure and overcome challenging situations, teach them to take responsibility for their own actions, practice self discipline, which will, in turn, increase their personal wellbeing and help the young people to feel a sense of belonging with other team members which will raise their levels of self esteem.
We will hopefully engage with young people over a period of time to support them until they feel confident in practicing these skills we’ve taught, which are all essential building blocks that will assist young people in transitioning to independence and live fuller and more fruitful lives and make them more resilient to cope with the challenges life will throw at them.
As a participant of the Young Star Mentoring programme, a young person will be put into a team or support group and complete challenging, adventurous and fun activities with other young people or team members who will themselves be care experienced. They will participate in hiking to the UK’s National Parks, such as Snowdonia in North Wales, to hike up Mt Snowdon or the Lake District to hike up Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. Mentoring work will be done with young people while on these journeys.
A yearly activity is our annual walk on the famous Camino de Santiago in Spain, which can be a 2 or 3-week journey through Spain walking a minimum of 300Km carrying our equipment in rucksacks on our backs walking to the city of Santiago de Compostela. This trip normally has a massive positive impact on the young people that participate. The pilgrimage challenges the young people to learn to be part of a team, be part of something bigger than themselves, learn determination, and be persistent and consistent with a given task. The Camino de Santiago trip typically takes place around June time each year, so we form the teams around January.
We will continue to keep the Care Leaver Covenant informed of upcoming events to encourage care leaver participation.
