Last year on the 12 September Trailblazers Mentoring celebrated its 21^st Anniversary.  Over 200 guests attended the event at the House of Lords with keynote speakers including our patron Lord Ramsbotham and Jonathan Aitken.  It was a wonderful opportunity to reflect and celebrate the successes and milestones the organization has achieved over the years and sharing these with the guests, many of whom have supported and been involved with the organisation over the years.

We have so many much more we want to achieve though and have a strong belief in the potential of the organization to grow and develop further.  The past year has been focused on strengthening the work of the organisation and building the infrastructure to support longer term growth.  At Trailblazers we very much believe in ‘better before bigger’ and we want to share with you some of the key developments and progress we have made over the past year.

Covid-19

The biggest impact in the past year has been Covid-19 and the unexpected changes we needed to make to the way we worked as an organisation.  This has included adapting our services to make sure we could continue to support the young men being mentored. Key changes were:

• Access to prisons for both mentors and staff ceased on the 20th March, resulting in mentoring sessions taking place remotely via phone or video platforms
• Trailblazers staff were all home working and many of the staff had periods of furlough during lockdown
• Service provision expanded to include more practical support being offered to the young men being released, including the provision of food vouchers, a basic mobile phone, transport provision to get to appointments/home and financial assistance to help with essential items, such as clothing.
• In July, the Project Managers were given permission to enter the prisons one day per week (not onto the wings in all prisons)
• An adapted mentoring service mentoring model was developed with the focus being on community mentoring. Project Managers are engaging with young men approximately 1 month prior to their release from prison. The Managers are completing the necessary paperwork, allocating a mentor, and introducing the young men to their mentor, usually on the day of release.  This initiative is in its early stages in all sites Trailblazers operates in, but early feedback has been positive from both the young men, prison staff and other professionals.  We anticipate this model is here to stay for the foreseeable future, with restricted access to the prison for staff and no access for volunteers currently.  This model is focused on offering largely remote, shorter term support to help the mentees with practical issues such as benefits, setting up bank accounts, ID, advocating on their behalf as well offering longer, ongoing support if required.

New Projects/Staff/Board members

In the past 12 months we have seen our staff team grow, with the addition of 3 new positions:  Service Delivery Director in February and two Community Support Worker in September, one supporting the West Midlands project and the other the London projects.

We have also had a new trustee join the Board.

A new project in HMPS Brixton is currently being established with mentoring service commencing shortly.

Volunteers

Our mentoring is delivered by a dedicated team of volunteers and as lockdown hit, many were at various stages of the recruitment process, as well as mentors who were actively mentoring in both prison and the community.  We were very keen to keep engaged with our volunteers, so we ran twice weekly online tutorial sessions during June and July that volunteers could attend remotely.  Feedback was incredibly positive with over half our volunteers attending at least one tutorial.

Funding

We also wish to acknowledge and thank our funders who have supported our work and development over the past 12 months:

Lloyds Bank Foundation, Premier League, City Bridge Trust, City & Metropolitan Trust, John Swire, Big Lottery, John Lyon’s Charity, Richard Reed, Queen Anne’s Gate, Millichope Foundation, Anson Charitable Trust, Derrill Allatt Foundation, Shanly Foundation, Johnnie Johnson Trust, Garfield Weston Foundation, Michael March Charity, Edward Cadbury, Clifford Chance, Bartle Family Trust, James Beattie Charity, 29^th May 1961, Wyseliot Charitable Trust, Clothworkers Foundation, Heart of Bucks Community Trust, Rothschild Foundation.

Partnerships

We have embarked on a pilot partnership with National Grid’s “Grid for Good” campaign and 6 Trailblazers mentees were ‘matched’ with business mentors from National Grid to look at work preparation skills.  This pilot is still ongoing with 1 mentee already successfully securing employment.  A second pilot project with Deloittes is being discussed now with an expected start date of this November.

Other

Trailblazers was shortlisted as a finalist for the Charity Film Awards which were held on the 21 April.  Staff were also involved in parts of the Aylesbury Prison choir documentary with Gareth Malone.

And finally…

We wish to thank our dedicated team of staff for pulling together through this difficult time and finding innovative ways to adapt the way they work, ensuring the needs of the young men involved with Trailblazers is always kept at the heart of their work.  We also want to thank all our amazing volunteers who give their time to support the work of the organisation, including out committed board of trustees, our Brand Ambassador as well all our mentors who have continued to support their mentees remotely, as well as offering their time to assist with other areas of work in the organisation – we appreciate every single one of you!

If your would like to donate to help support our work visit http://trailblazersmentoring.org.uk/staging/get-involved/