We connect young people facing barriers with inspiring mentors

We connect young people facing barriers with inspiring mentors

All young people deserve equal opportunities

Our mentors share their experience and insights, giving young people a different perspective from home or school. Our mission is to connect more young people with inspiring role models to help them make confident and informed decisions about their future.

EXPERIENCE

We’ve been engaging young people with online mentoring for 20 years

TECHNOLOGY

We use a bespoke, constantly evolving platform that puts safeguarding at its core

REACH

Our platform has provided 150,000 young people so far with a high-quality mentoring experience

QUALITY

We know our mentoring is high quality because of the results of our robust evaluation frameworks

OUTCOMES

Our mentoring has both deep and long lasting impact. Our mentees are 2x more likely to access university than their peers

Mentee stories

Divleen’s story

I’m now a total nerd about mentoring. I talk about it all the time! 

Aliza’s story

Mentoring was so important for me, especially during a lockdown where you only see the people you already know. You get to connect with someone you’d never speak to outside of school and that’s really important because it forces you out of your comfort zone.

Khadija’s story

From my perspective, the biggest challenge facing young people today is deciding what career path to go down. Between Year 8 and Year 10 I changed my mine five times; I wanted to be a detective, zoologist, chef, doctor and lawyer.

Daniel’s story

I only had a vague idea of what I wanted to do after GCSE and I had no idea where to start. I was interested in aviation, zoology and conservation but after that I was lost. I didn’t know if you needed a degree or an apprenticeship and I wasn’t sure which path to choose. Mentoring was a very useful tool to help with this; it gave me a push to start looking at new things.

Caitlin’s story

My mentor was lovely; we bonded over our pets and that made me feel more connected to her. She made me feel calmer about applying via UCAS and the interviews process. It was so easy to talk to her because she’s not much older than me.

Simran’s story

I always wonder whether I’d be thinking or feeling the same about university if there wasn’t a pandemic. I completely lost that in-person interaction and was struggling with the UCAS application because of it. But then, if there hadn’t been the pandemic, I wouldn’t have been able to do the virtual work experience and use the Brightside platform.

We turned to Brightside because they’re well known in the mentoring field for their online intervention. With their strong focus on safeguarding and their platform’s content library of study skills, they were exactly what we were looking for.

Education Liaison and Outreach Manager at Middlesex University

I found mentoring to be a positive experience: it made me feel more confident and it was really rewarding. I loved feeling like I was making a difference.

Laura, Mentor

I’d recommend mentoring to anyone: I’ve already got my brother involved. Sharing your knowledge can make a big impact on a person’s life.

Olivia, Mentor

I had a great experience on this project. I thought the Brightside platform was very, very good for an online mentoring experience. I expected it to be a bit dry but it wasn’t; you could access it on the phone or the mac and it was all seamless.

Steve, Mentor

The Brightside team are amazing. Any time we had questions or concerns, they were so supportive.

Deputy Head of Widening Participation at the University of Cambridge

Anyone thinking of mentoring should absolutely go for it; I was worried I wouldn’t have a lot to offer but you always have more to offer than you think. It isn’t about knowing all the answers, it’s about being a sounding board and coming up with a solution together. The impact you can have on someone’s life is huge.

Eleanor, mentor

News and events

And the winners are…

We had the most incredible night celebrating our 20th anniversary on the eve of National Mentoring …

And the winners are… Read More »

Brightside celebrates its 20th anniversary

Although we’ve been marking our anniversary throughout the year by publishing a microsite, a video and …

Brightside celebrates its 20th anniversary Read More »

Our outcomes review: how we’re measuring impact

In our previous blog post, we explained why we decided that this was the year to …

Our outcomes review: how we’re measuring impact Read More »

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Contact us

Get in touch for more programme information, to work with us, or discover more about our work.