How We Help
Challenge Me Mentoring
Trying to engage with education when you are experiencing social, emotional, behavioural and mental health difficulties is a big ask. Yet there are so many young people across the region who are expected to do just that. When they struggle to focus in maths, or can’t self-regulate their emotions in the classroom, education becomes just one more thing in that young person’s life that is ‘against them’. These are the hard-to-reach young people we are passionate about working with.
We know that mentoring is a powerful tool for supporting hard-to-reach young people. It helps them to develop an awareness of identity, builds their resilience, fosters self-respect, and promotes a sense of empowerment.
By tailoring the 12-step Challenging Me programme to each young person, we are able to create a safe, nurturing, non-judgemental space in which our mentors can encourage these young people to recognise and restructure the thoughts and behaviours that are holding them back. We help to tackle the underlying beliefs these young people have about themselves and the world around them. We encourage them to reflect on the relationships that have shaped them, and we support them to become more confident and resilient.
With the 1:1 Challenging Me mentoring programme, we aim to give young people all the tools they need to go on to live authentic, happy and fulfilling lives, believing that what they do and feel matters, and understanding that they have ownership over their own futures.
The Challenging Me programme can be delivered on a 1:1 basis or as a series of targeted workshops to groups of up to 12 young people. To refer a young person to the mentoring programme or discuss our workshop provision, 0161 952 4471 or email info@challenge-me.org.
Details
For: – This course can be delivered for 1:1 or small groups.
Time: Each sessions lasts approximately 2 hours. Frequency & duration of programme is dependent on the needs of each individual.
Location: 1:1 sessions are delivered out in the community. Small group sessions can be delivered on or off-site. If you need us to provide a suitable meeting space, we are happy to do so for an additional charge.
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The 12 steps of Challenging Me
We work with the young person to develop an understanding of identity and raise awareness of ‘self’ in relation to the people around them. Exploring themes of consciousness, we ask them to perform a critical examination of the things that make them who they are.
We challenge the young person to think about what education means to them, what their experiences have been, how they learn best, and what they think education should look like. Where appropriate, we will encourage re-engagement with the education system.
We explore self-perception in relation to the young person’s experiences and look at external projection, instinct and feelings. We begin to work towards developing life-skills, including self-empowerment.
We challenge the young person to consider what makes a relationship healthy or unhealthy and to think about the people in their lives who help them to grow. We ask them to consider what respect is, where it comes from, and its role within relationships.
We focus on the importance of two-way communication, including non-verbal elements like body language and facial expressions. We explore the ways we can show somebody what we’re feeling without saying it, and how we can identify emotions in other people.
We explore the differences between the two, and encourage the young person to think about how each one can be perceived by the people we are communicating with. We discuss how aggression can impact negatively on those around us and reduce our prospects, and how we can communicate more effectively.
By thinking about what conflict is and how it is resolved, we encourage the young person to consider the importance of approaching conflict from a position of respect and understanding. We identify the markers of potentially dangerous situations and encourage them to recognise trigger points in themselves and others. We also discuss de-escalation techniques and conflict-resolution skills.
By encouraging the young person to think about a time in their life when they were distracted on their way towards achieving something, we can ask them to reflect on the part they played in allowing that distraction. How could they have done things differently? We ask them to think about what they want for the future and to consider what obstacles might get in the way.
Empathy, critical and creative thinking, dealing with stress, good social skills, basic cooking skills and personal grooming are all important in giving us the best chance of building a happy and healthy life. We encourage the young person to think about the areas they want to improve, develop a strategy, and begin implementing it.
We encourage the young person to think about what they want from life and what they want to achieve, and we ask them to consider the steps they might need to take to get there.
We talk about good habits and how they can help us towards our goals. We look at the importance of being persistent when developing new skills, and begin to think about developing good habits that will help the young person achieve their goals.
We encourage the young person to reflect on their achievements throughout the programme and ask them to think about how they see themselves now in relation to others. We ask them to think about when they shine the brightest and to identify all the things they like about themselves.