Peer mentoring can:

• Give your organisation the knowledge and skills it needs to thrive
• Save you money, as it’s a free way to add skills to your group
• Give you confidence that you’re on the right path, with a view from someone successful who’s done it before

What Shannon Davies, Mothers Matter had to say about support from Scott Tandy:

“The peer mentoring scheme provided by Interlink was super helpful to our organisation and has enabled us to be more business aware. We were provided support to develop Google workspace and the time and effort provided by the mentor was really helpful and so informative.

The mentor was dedicated to addressing our needs and it has made our workforce more strategic, enabled us to all work more efficiently together as a team and allowed cross platform working such as two team members working on the same document. 

Having received mentoring on creating a funding application, Danny Grehan of Friends of Tyn Y Bryn Skate Park said:

“After being so involved in the application, it was great to have an external pair of eyes read through the application and suggest things that, having been through the process, gave us an idea of what was needed in the application. This was an important intervention at exactly the right time and of exactly the right sort… It gave me an added positivity about our project and about our chances of success. Having Craig work with us on our application had boosted our confidence in our project and our application.”

After receiving peer mentoring, Out of the Box Creative Media told us:

“Tom’s guidance gave us the confidence to actualise our application and navigate us through what was seemingly a simple process but one which can be fraught with unexpected difficulties. He was patient, open to suggestions and always cast a positive light on what we thought at the time was an impossible goal. Tom highlighted some obtuse points we may well have missed in our deliberations and therefore made our application stronger. I can only thank Tom and InterLink so many times – many people with autism and learning difficulties have now benefitted from Tom’s knowledge, know-how and belief.”

If you are interested in receiving support from a Peer Mentor, please fill in this Peer Mentor Request for Support Form; or for further information, contact the Community Advice Team at: communityadvice@interlinkrct.org.uk

The benefits of being a Peer Mentor include:

• Sharing knowledge and experience within the sector
• Sharing good practices
• Meeting new people
• Gaining funds for your organisation

You will be brought in at the right time to support a group or organisation’s development. You can choose how often and when to take on mentoring requests based on your own workload.

What Still Me had to say about Jenny Hare after she mentored them:

“To Jenny, Thank you for all your help from everyone @ still me. A massive thank you on behalf of Karen, Ceri and Amy, you have enabled us to successable [sic] the lottery funding and as of 22/1/24 they have allocated us £18,161 – you led us well” READ FULL CASE STUDY

Nina Finnigan, from Bryncynon Strategy, told us about her successful project to mentor RCT Heart Heroes to gain CIO status:

“Mentoring RCT Heart Heroes through the process of gaining CIO status has been a rewarding and inspiring experience. ’m incredibly proud of the progress they’ve made and look forward to seeing the positive changes they will continue to bring to the area.  Their success serves as a powerful reminder that with the right support and determination, local organisations can achieve great things and truly change lives.” READ FULL CASE STUDY

Natasha Burnell, Programme Manager at People in Work told us:

“In a nutshell peer-mentoring for me was being able to be the support for others, that I had missed myself, I’ve gained additional skills and knowledge that I’d never come across before as well as having an ‘insider’ view of better practices at other organisations. It has been an incredibly rewarding and interesting experience and I look forward to supporting more groups in the future.” READ FULL CASE STUDY.

 

Janis Werrett, Director at Cynon Valley Organic Adventures has mentored people on green social prescribing. She had this to say about being a mentor:

“Being able to connect with other groups with similar values and aims as our own is invaluable. It has helped to build some strong mutually supportive links that will continue long into the future. The most important part of it for me though is playing a part in creating and supporting other community initiatives like ours, helping to raise awareness of green prescribing and to share own resources and structure to ensure that other areas get to benefit from similar activities and support.”

If you are interested in becoming a Peer Mentor, please fill in this Peer Mentor Expression of Interest Form; or for further information, contact the Community Advice Team at: communityadvice@interlinkrct.org.uk