The final part of our 10 Year Anniversary series is here! Keep on reading to find out more about how the last few years have been and where we are now!
PS: There is only ONE WEEK until our 10 Year Anniversary Event! Get your tickets now and invite your friends to come along – all are welcome!
2018
Ignite Mentoring was continuing to grow – we had 129 mentors and coordinators leading our programs. It was the beginning of a new chapter with 83% of our mentors being brand new to Ignite Mentoring. Lots of mentors from this cohort continued to mentor with us for future years with many of them still being involved today!
Our Semester 1 excursion was held with our Southern River College students. Through the clubs at the University of Western Australia (UWA), the students were able to participate in engineering activities, DJ with the Electronic Music Appreciation Society (EMAS), and play Quidditch with the Harry Potter Society!
2018 also saw Ignite Mentoring expanding to two new schools – Hampton Senior High School and Fremantle College. In Semester 2, we held an excursion with Fremantle College where they experienced sports science with Physical Education Student Association (PESA) and looked at the DNA of strawberries in labs!
Ignite Mentoring won two awards through UWA Guild Volunteering in 2018, including Best Student Volunteer Club, and our President, Harry Sanderson, won Best Student Volunteer of the Year!
2019
This year saw Ignite Mentoring expand even further - we had an outstanding 157 mentors and coordinators in 2019! Better yet, our mentor base consisted of many more students from Curtin, Murdoch, and Notre Dame. Having mentors from different institutions shows the wide variety of pathways students can take after school – this was very exciting for Ignite Mentoring!
In 2019, we started mentoring at Morley Senior High School and Thornlie Senior High School, as we still are today! We held excursions with Thornlie, Southern River College, and Balga Senior High School, running activities with different clubs such as the Psychology Society (PsySoc). Ignite Mentoring also won UWA Guild's Best Student Volunteering Club in 2019 for the third year in a row!
2020
2020 was a hard year for everyone and Ignite Mentoring faced many challenges in the first half of the year. In semester 1 we had a great cohort of 171 mentors and coordinators trained and excited to enter the classroom! Unfortunately, we had to cancel our semester 1 program after two weeks to ensure our mentors, schools, students and broader communities remained safe during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020.
Despite this, it didn’t stop us from having a great semester 2 and lots of successes as an organisation outside the classroom! Our amazing Executive and Leadership Teams were still committed to working on Ignite Mentoring while in lockdown, holding Zoom meetings and online quizzes to keep in touch!
During the holidays, Ignite Mentoring held a classic Bunnings Sausage Sizzle before classes started. However, this sizzle was significant – it was one of the first Bunnings Sausage Sizzles to be held in Perth after lockdown! Due to this amazing feat, Ignite Mentoring was featured on national television!
Thankfully, in Semester 2 we were able to return to the classroom! Things were looking up after a hard Semester 1 as we held 19 classes at 5 schools! Our semester 2 excursion was highly anticipated by all of our mentors. Better yet, our amazing Operations and Programs Teams introduced an exciting new element to our excursions – a Careers Fair! The Careers Fair featured a wide variety of career pathways and tertiary education institution representatives to expose our students to a range of opportunities available to them after high school. This was a huge success – and we have continued to hold Careers Fairs ever since!
2021
Here we are at our 10 Year Anniversary! While the year is far from over, we have still had some fantastic achievements this year.
In semester 1, we had 164 mentors and coordinators at 4 schools across Perth, with the number of mentors from a variety of universities growing each year. We also made a brand new recruitment video!
Our team showed great resilience when our excursion had to be postponed due to a COVID-19 lockdown in semester 1. Luckily, we were able to reschedule with Morley Senior High School and run a great day thanks to our Programs Team and the support of Aurizon Community Giving Fund!
At the end of the semester, we held an awesome event for National Volunteers Week thanks to Volunteering WA, Lottery West, and our Volunteers and Fundraising Team! The event included entertainment from local musicians and actors! We also had the chance to make an awesome video to celebrate our volunteers – check it out here!
Recently, alumni Kate Woolhouse, with the help of alumni Max and Andrea, recently ran a workshop at her school in Broome based around identifying conflict and working together, inspired by her time running Ignite Mentoring programs in the classroom. It’s always great to see our alumni going on to have a positive impact through their careers and remaining connected with the organisation beyond the time spent as a mentor!
As of now, Ignite Mentoring is continuing to grow our structure, mentor base, and impact in the classroom. We currently have a significant number of mentors from Notre Dame, Curtin, Murdoch, and ECU, alongside a strong base of UWA students. We are also returning to Hampton Senior High School and Southern River College this semester which is very exciting!
That concludes our 10 Year Anniversary series! Thank you to all of our past and present mentors and coordinators for being involved with Ignite Mentoring over the past 10 years and making it what it is today – our program isn’t possible without you!
We would LOVE for you to celebrate with us on our 10 Year Anniversary in just ONE WEEK!