Our ‘LOOK Mentor of the Month’ Award shows our appreciation at LOOK for all of the hard work that each mentor does as volunteers for our charity.
We’re delighted to announce our October Mentor of the Month is Josh!
Ever since Josh completed his mentor training earlier this year, he has hit the ground running, getting stuck into mentoring as much as possible. It’s so lovely to see the genuine connection that Josh is nurturing with his mentee, developing over the past few months.
The care and consideration with which Josh approaches mentoring has already made a great impact on his mentee, and has had such a positive affect on him. To achieve this in such a short space of time is a credit to the way he’s taken mentoring in his stride and embraced everything about the project whole-heartedly.
A word from Josh’s mentee, Charlie
“Over the last few months, Josh has really helped me with some of the difficulties I have faced at school. He understands that some people can be nasty and his support has been phenomenal.
The fact we have such similar interest allows me to engage with him and I really enjoy the banter between us.
The only complaint that I have about Josh is that he does not support the same football club as me. Over time maybe I can convince him to switch teams. LOL.”
Charlie’s Mum
“As a Mum, the support Josh has given Charlie has been invaluable, especially because Charlie and Josh appear to be getting on really well. You could not have got a better match with regards to their shared interests.
Josh came into our world just as Charlie needed a bit of emotional support and I am pleased to advise that the bullying he was experiencing at school appears to have stopped.”
Meet Josh
I’m Josh and I’ve been a mentor since July. I’ve had nystagmus since birth so have grown up partially sighted and experienced all the frustration and comedic gold that comes with it. LOOK supported me when I was younger and it was really exciting to see that it was possible to become a mentor.
As someone who has come out the other side of formal education, it’s been a really good opportunity to share what I’ve learnt and support someone else when they’re experiencing the same things that I went through.
As far as being a mentor goes, my top tip would be to just chat. LOOK has been incredible in their pairing and the amount that me and my mentee have in common is amazing. We don’t talk about visual impairment every message – mostly we have arguments about F1 and football but it’s really interesting finding out how school is going and I do my best to point my mentee in the right direction – support wise or work wise. Reading the messages is something I really look forward to and I’d really recommend either becoming a mentee or mentor!
