We matched our first twelve mentoring pairs back in November, mostly volunteers with a spare afternoon a fortnight and a willingness to just turn up consistently. Six months in, ten of those twelve pairs are still meeting regularly, which is a better hit rate than we expected for a program built from scratch.
The thing that made the biggest difference wasn’t a curriculum or a training session — it was reliability. A mentor who shows up every second Thursday, rain or shine, ends up mattering more than one with a more impressive resume who cancels twice in the first month. We changed our screening process to ask about people’s actual availability far more bluntly than we used to.
We also started sending a simple reminder text the day before every catch-up, which cut no-shows almost to zero. Small, unglamorous fix — but it’s the kind of thing that keeps a volunteer program running instead of quietly falling apart. We’re opening ten more mentoring spots next term.