SAYes Mentoring - Support our Mentors and Mentees

London Stock Exhange

As our organisation continues to grow and expand, so do our projects and partners. We are delighted to announce our new funding partnership with the London Stock Exchange. 

GlobalGiving Matching Campaign

We exceeded the $1000 fundraising target that we set during the April campaign. The littlexlittle fundraisers run twice yearly, where over a 5-day period GlobalGiving match 50% of all donations made through the GlobalGiving website (up to a value of $50). Thank you to all our supporters who contributed and made this fundraiser such
a success.

Happy Birthday SAYes Mentoring
 
We celebrated our 14th Birthday at the beginning of September which coincided with us reaching our GlobalGiving fundraising target. What a great birthday present!

SAYes and NIKE partnership

Earlier this year, SAYes and NIKE teamed up to offer 25 fully sponsored slots on our 9-month e-mentoring programme for young people living in South Africa. We are excited to start sharing some of the Mentor and Mentee journeys. Read their individual stories on our photo attachments with this report.

Meet our mentees

We have new interviews on our blog feature, 'Meet our Mentees'. Keep checking our website blog each week to read more about our mentees. 

Netto Workshop

Netto hosted a fantastic workshop for SAYes mentees, in support of The Financial Planning Institute South Africa's MyMoney123 Programme. Their team shared their respective responsibilities at Netto Invest; talked about financial planning; and showed mentees how best to manage their personal budgets.

In April, we signed up for GlobalGiving's Little by Little fundraising campaign, where GlobalGiving matched 50% of all donations up to 50 dollars. This was a great success - thanks to our supporters. With GlobalGiving's contribution we raised close to $650, which helped towards programme costs. Due to our success with this campaign we will sign up with GlobalGiving to do it again in September.

Here are some of the ways we are developing our mentoring programme:

In the UK, our first mentees graduated from our pilot programme. We have had some great feedback, some of which is "life-changing". More will graduate in the coming months and we will share our full pilot report with you when they have. We are now looking to expand our support to more young care leavers throughout the UK through our local authority partners and through referrals from our graduating mentees. 

Our third year in partnership with Waves for Change is up and running. Waves for Change is a fantastic organisation supporting children and young people, using surfing as a tool to support their mental health needs. We are delighted to be working in partnership with them again this year providing mentorship to their young intern surf coaches. 

In South Africa we are delighted to be working with St Michael's Child and Youth Care Centre in Cape Town again. St Michael's was one of our first partner children's homes, so we really are thrilled to have reconnected with them and to be providing mentorship support to the young people who are planning to exit the home now that they are approaching 18.

Loadshedding (power cuts) continue to make online meetings a challenge in South Africa, but we are happy to report that the majority of our mentors and mentees have found a way to continue to meet on a weekly basis. Where there's a will there's a way!

We continue to work with care leavers throughout South Africa and with our partner child and youth care centres. Now that covid restrictions have been removed, we look forward to connecting with them all again.