Project: Race2Discover (Luton Training and Mentoring)

Luton Training & Mentoring (LTM) is delivering a two-year project, Race2Discover, that is helping people who fall into hard-to-reach groups to ‘discover’ their true potential and ability. Race2Discover is helping equip individuals within the target group with the skills, knowledge and, above all, confidence, to become future champions of learning: local people actively promoting the power and potential of learning and earning amongst the local people with whom they live and interact throughout Bedfordshire. This project takes mentoring one stage further, providing recognised NVQ mentoring qualifications and transferable skills for people with multiple disadvantages – the economically inactive/unemployed/BME groups – to ensure that individuals from all walks of life can receive one-to-one customised support from LTM qualified mentors, to identify and progress to new learning and earning opportunities.

Project interviews

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Project feature

The ‘race’ is to ‘discover’ potential through group and one-to-one mentoring sessions supplemented by training in a wide range of basic and employability skills. The Race2Discover programme invest in people to champion the value of learning and skilled training. This project focuses on helping people realise their potential and ability through sustained support, and integrating them into mainstream society with improved confidence and transferable skills.

The two-year programme is available to anyone in Bedfordshire who is not currently employed. The project provides tailored support to those who have disabilities and/or ill health, the long-term unemployed, lone parents, teenage parents, Black/Asian and Minority Ethnic groups, new migrant and refugee communities. LTM’s highly structured mentoring support is based on one-to-one mentoring that help mentees gain confidence and improve self esteem and interview skills by recognising their strengths and building on these to help mentees recognise their individual talents.

Their objective is to help people into employment by:

• helping the individual to identify personal and social barriers that prevent them from gaining employment
• providing social and interactive skills
• helping them meet or overcome these barriers and look at ways to move forward, building on their positive qualities
• taking qualifications alongside the mentoring programme, if some of the barriers identified are lack of qualifications.

Anjana Parmar (the project’s director) explained that ‘The project has been specially designed to work with those individuals who need that extra help, support and guidance through our customised one-to-one mentoring and training opportunities and to enable people to realise their full potential and talents. LTM’s mentors, many of whom have been in the same situations as those they are supporting, have full empathy and are able to understand and appreciate the dilemma that many people face. Therefore they are able to gain the trust and confidence of those they help. Our mentors are able to agree a clear plan of action with our mentees, which increases enthusiasm for engaging as a direct result of the flexible, hands-on training and mentoring support.’

The Race2Discover project also helps those who have been made redundant. It is a drastic change for someone and pushes them out of their comfort zone of employment with a steady income, for example. They find themselves suddenly faced by hardships that can have an impact on their personal lives and family relationships. LTM’s customised one-to-one mentoring helps to keep them motivated and, above all, helps them to explore alternative but realistic career choices and goals. It is all too easy for people to lose focus and go downhill into a downward spiral which can lead to mental health issues such as depression. The mentoring support helps them to discuss their issues and reminds them of the gifts and talents they have.

One of the successes of the project has been in their ability to engage the hard-to-reach into the programme. In fact the project has been so successful that they have exceeded their target numbers of 125 participants 15 months into the 24-month programme. Race2Discover provide additional support in partnership with Bedford Jobcentre Plus, where volunteers are on hand to advise and invite those who could benefit from the programme to come along.

LTM provides outreach support as it is essential to go out into the community to reach people rather than expecting them to come to you. LTM markets its provision through leaflets that are placed in community centres, corporate organisations, libraries, and the Jobcentre, partner organisations and its strong networks.

Another key feature to the Race2Discover model’s success is that those who join the programme often discover skills that can be used for the benefit of others within the programme – they become volunteers. Many who volunteer at the Jobcentre are people who have come into the programme in the same way – through being unemployed and looking for work.

Michael came to the project through the Jobcentre. After losing his management level job and unable to find another despite hundreds of applications and numerous interviews, he joined the Race2Discover programme and soon began volunteering, putting his skills to good use. ‘It’s great for me to actually feel useful again. It’s given me a sense of value which I was lacking. Because we are people who are ourselves unemployed and looking for work, there’s a great deal of empathy and a great deal of understanding of that person sitting there that perhaps removes some of the stigma that they might have.’

Geraldine lost the administrative job that she had held for many years and then suffered an injury that prevented her from working. She says, ‘I actually felt quite useless and deflated. With the support of LTM my hope was reinstated – they helped me see and realise my qualities and that I am still of use. Personally, it was like I was a bit lost and someone rediscovered me and said “you are worthwhile”. That has really given me that boost and that confidence that I needed.’

Although Geraldine came on the mentoring course to build confidence and prepare her to look for new work, the project realised that she had special talents. Because of her background, she found it difficult to recognise and value the skills that she has, but she has grown in confidence and now, like Michael, mentors others. ‘A new person has been reborn. I couldn’t believe it was me. It was as if I was somewhere else in the room looking at this person called Geraldine. LTM is about empowering the person. How are we going to put this person back together so they can realise their potential. It’s like reinstating hope.’

With five children, Michelle has had her hands full as a single mother but wanted to get into training as a counsellor. She is also benefiting from both aspects of the programme – as a participant and a volunteer – and is a natural mentor. ‘I find it inspiring to hear everybody. We’re all individuals and have our own stories. It’s very much giving back to me as well. I’m gaining a lot of experience. It’s like a working day, an experience of work I haven’t had for quite some time and being able to work towards a qualification as well. It’s people reaching out to people – you do have to have a little bit of passion.’

The engagement within the community is a striking feature of the project, and the project’s intrinsic value for liberating human potential doesn’t stop with the participants. For example, those who are retired may not need employment but they have vast accumulated experience, wisdom, talent and skill to contribute. The project offers them a means through which their expertise can be utilised to the benefit of the community.

Jim is a retired man with a background in senior management. He volunteers on the project as a mentor and business adviser, which has given his life increased meaning and value. ‘It’s worthwhile from the point of view of the impact it has on the client group, but also worthwhile for the person. Mentoring as a discipline has huge advantages for the people going through it. And sometimes unpredictable advantages in terms of behaviour change, character change, and also freeing people and letting them recognise the skills that they’ve got – that they’re not hopeless, that they’re not written off. It’s life-transforming.’

Jim spoke about the opportunity to volunteer in a meaningful way, ‘It taps into a vein of altruism that a lot of people have, enabling people to express that. Improving other people allows you to improve yourself as well. That differentiates this project from others, for me.’

The project director, Anjana Parmar, is now working at a strategic level to try to ensure that the voices of the individual and the community are heard in order to channel funds in the directions in which they are most needed. She highlighted several key groups: 

• disengaged young people who may be considered the ‘throwaways’ of society through no fault of their own, for example being disadvantaged by cultural or community restrictions and/or dysfunctional families
• special needs young people where support must be customised to meet with their specific individual needs and help their independence and integration into society
• unemployed, where the most effective deployment of funding can be identified by looking at programmes that are having the greatest impact in the community
• Black/Asian Ethnic minorities and new arrivals, where the significant skills they bring remain largely unused
• women, especially those who suffer domestic violence or have been abandoned and lack basic skills and confidence.

It is a tough agenda but one that inspires the people at Luton Training & Mentoring with passion and commitment to have positive impacts on people’s lives and the communities it serves. Anjana sums it up: ‘What we are really about is to help people shine and to see the gifts that they possess. We’re helping them but they are helping so many others out there without realising it. What we want to do is ensure that they don’t lose motivation, confidence and that recognition of who they are and the talents that they have. In doing that, they are offering so many other people that hope.’

Contact details

Anjana Parmar, Project Manager/Director
Luton Training & Mentoring
Community Enterprise & Resource Centre, The Moakes, Luton, LU3 3QB
Tel: +44 (0)1582 848488 Mob: +44 (0)7732 333362 Fax: +44 (0)1582 848480
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