Peer mentoring: Young Educators

"When you say that you're working with young asylum seekers, you get very different reactions," says 17-year-old Kirsty Blythe. "My friends were quite interested, but older people could be quite dismissive." Kirsty and her peers, 17-year-old Jenny Poole and 16-year-old Alex Hood, are among the 20 young people from Kent who have been trialling UK Youth's new BTEC Intermediate Certificate in Peer Mentoring, as part of a scheme developed by Kent Youth.

The young mentors, who met every Thursday in a community centre in Dartford, worked with asylum seekers from the nearby town of Gravesend, which has a small population of young people who arrived in the UK as unaccompanied minors. The mentees were referred to the project by social services in Gravesend; the mentors were already involved with UK Youth. The mentors' role was to provide English language support to their mentees, helping with vocabulary, pronunciation and computer skills, which could mean anything from overseeing job applications to sending emails and digital photos to families.