Empower paired university student with young people for one to one, near to peer mentoring to set goals, navigate challenges and build key skills.
What is Empower?
If young people receive 1:1 near-to-peer mentoring they will feel more confident setting goals and navigating challenges, be more self aware, have more self-belief and improve their relationships with others. In turn this will lead to improved expectations for future life.
We work with schools with a high proportion of pupils on pupil premium and with English as a second language to identify pupils who will benefit most from the intervention. These are often young people who are struggling in the classroom.
The students we work with are trained and supported to deliver meaningful, targeted mentoring sessions based on our established framework.
What’s the impact?
Empower aims to improve young people’s expectations for future life through near-to-peer mentoring. To meet this aim we ensure every young person who takes part in the programme:
- Feels more confident setting goals and making decisions
- Develops their self awareness
- Experiences improved relationships with others
- Builds improved self-belief
To achieve this our students are trained to create an environment which is safe, supported, respectful, interesting and challenging. An environment which supports key social and emotional skill development.
In 2022-23
78%
partners agreed young people show increased confidence in making decisions for their future
89%
partners agreed they have observed an improvement in the young people’s expectations for future life
56%
students agreed young people show more engagement with their studies
My confidence, especially in my ability to talk to and help others, has really improved. Mentoring provides the challenge of approaching things from different angles when at first you’re not getting through, which helps in all areas of student life.
Jo Williams, Southampton Hub volunteer
why should we deliver empower with your university?
What our university partners value about Empower includes:
- Supporting Access and Participation Plan and strategic priorities. Our programme has dual impact: along with supporting educational attainment and access opportunities for young people, our student outcomes can form part of your institution’s approach to educational gains as part of the TEF, and support students’ wellbeing, belonging, and employability skills.
- Shaping young people’s expectations of future life. With many Widening Participation teams’ approach shifting from lifting aspirations to supporting expectations for young people, a mentoring programme like Empower offers a place for young people to explore their futures, imagine new possibilities, and be guided by trained university student mentors. We work with school partners to identify young people who most need this support.
- Building internal staff capacity and expertise. Empower is a volunteering programme that reaches 20-30 students a year at our Hubs. For many Widening Participation or Education teams, delivering a programme at this scale with internal staffing is challenging. Partnership with us enables your institution to kickstart this delivery, build local connections, and use our tried and tested formula. Our external strategy means if you want to internalise the work, we can help – ask us about handover and quality assurance support.
In terms of student volunteering … Student Hubs’ support has ensured [Kingston University] have had a compelling offer for students around volunteering. Secondly, building on our civic mission, how we build, maintain and develop our relationships with community partners, initially within the borough and then beyond that across London.
Ali Orr, Director of Student Development and Graduate Success, Kingston University