EMPOWER
EXPLORE
ELEVATE
THE FUTURE IS MENTORING T Over the past decade, the demand for mentoring at Westminster has driven our mentoring programmes to adapt, transform and expand. This year we launched course-embedded Group Mentoring to allow hundreds more students and recent graduates to reap the benefits of a mentoring relationship.
he benefits of having a mentor are countless. For students who are set on working in a specific industry, being matched with a mentor who has specialist knowledge and real insight into that industry is invaluable. Meanwhile, students who are less sure about their steps after graduation can still enhance their employability by learning the many soft skills our mentors have honed over years of practise. If nothing else, all students benefit from a confidence boost, gaining a clearer vision of what they are capable of and knowing that they are supported by their mentors. And the benefits are felt both ways. By all accounts, mentors discover a new appreciation for their own career journeys. They are encouraged by what they see in Westminster students, and
enjoy the challenge of gaining new skills through becoming mentors. In fact, the numbers speak for themselves: when Westminster first launched its mentoring programme in 2012 there were 12 mentoring relationships. Fast forward to today and we have thousands of mentors willing to volunteer on our programmes, with 1,045 mentoring relationships supported in the last academic year alone. While accommodating the growth of mentoring at Westminster, the Mentoring Team have also worked to diversify the programme by adapting it to the individual needs of students and volunteers. Under the umbrella of Future Ready Mentoring, we now have three distinct branches of mentoring on offer, tailored to suit the varied needs of our students.