Backing Young Britain Mentoring Programme to close

I have been mentoring with Backing Young Britain Mentoring, which matches up mentors with young (18-24) job seekers.  Today I received an email stating:

I regret to inform you that on 16 July 2010 Nord Anglia Education Partnerships Ltd received notification from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that the Backing Young Britain Mentoring programme will close. Nord Anglia Education will continue to provide a reduced service up to 17 September 2010. This service will focus on matching mentees to mentors and ensuring young people begin their mentoring.

In principle, how little could a mentor-mentee matching service be run on?  Would a website, where people registered as potential mentors or mentees, that allowed people to make their own matches be viable?  How much mediation is required?

The BYB Programme had a high profile advertising campaign, so it is likely that many people who signed up as mentors were new to this volunteering malarkey (like me), and wouldn’t necessarily move on to other schemes, especially if they don’t know much about them.  Is there an opportunity in a slimmed-down successsor to BYBM, taking advantage of the fact that lots of people did sign up and might be keen to continue?  I certainly felt slightly bereft when I received the letter.  Not surprised, but a bit sad.  What’s important though is the effort to make a difference, not the administrative incarnation it currently exists in.

Get in touch if you are interested or have any ideas/leads – pete dot james dot collins at googlemail dot com.

Creating a Social Enterprise

On Wednesday I went to a seminar run by i-Social Entrepreneurs in Birmingham, on setting up a social enterprise.  I’m still toying with the idea I described here although my conception of it keeps shifting.  At the seminar I coined the term “volunteer virtual assistants” which seemed to fit nicely with my current take on it.  Basically, if you are a tiny, struggling social enterprise there may be a role that “volunteer virtual assistants” can play for you.  Perhaps you don’t have the time or the skills to sort out that cashflow spreadsheet, do that research, or proof read that proposal.  You might not need a permanent volunteer, just a couple of hours of someone’s time to enable you to get on with pushing the organisation forward, not getting bogged down.  Well connected groups, e.g. those affiliated to churches, wouldn’t need the service because they are already connected to a large community, but many struggling one-man-bands might.

But I digress.  The seminar was fascinating, particularly the preponderance of people who already work in caring professions (social care etc) but can see the writing on the wall vis a vis how public services will be funded and commissioned in the future.  It appears that David Cameron’s “Big Society”, an inspiring but frustratingly vague concept, is already being planned for by those that we will need to take the lead in providing services.

Other observations include: three-quarters of the attendees were women; that Loaf chap (the excellently named Tom Baker) got a mention – he seems to be a bit of a Birmingham celebrity; social enterprise is a very quickly growing sector, and this will almost certainly increase.

All in all, an interesting and inspiring session, albeit one not really aimed at me as it turned out.

UPDATE – see here for a one-page overview of the virtual volunteering thing – others seem to be pursuing similar things according to i-volunteer