Permanent Role

 

 

 

Organisation: Babbasa Youth Empowerment Projects CIC

Job Title:  Mentoring Programme Lead

Hours: 28 hours a week

Salary: £22,470 (FTE £28,088 per annum)

Line managed by: Assistant Services Manager

Start Date: November 2023

Employment term: Permanent (subject to continuation of funding)

Location: Bristol-based at Babbasa Hub, Backfields House, Upper York Street, St Pauls, Bristol BS2 8QJ with hybrid working arrangements considered.

 

About Babbasa

Babbasa is an award-winning, Bristol-based, social enterprise with a vision to create a world where all people are inspired and able to realise their employment and enterprise ambitions, irrespective of where they live, their nationality, ethnicity, gender, race, sexuality or faith. Babbasa realises its mission through its subsidiary enterprises including Babbasa’s Youth Empowerment Programmes and Recruitment & Inclusion Services (BRIS) and its core values of Imagination, Determination and Kindness.

 

Babbasa supports low-income and ethnic minority young people to prepare for the workplace as well as support employers to recruit diverse talent, develop cultural competencies and create inclusive work environments for all to thrive. The direct support for young people includes soft skills training, mentoring, and information and guidance support. The direct support for employers includes Recruitment, Inclusion Advisory Support, Cultural Competency Training, Research, Inclusion Needs Analysis and Onboarding Support. Over the next decade, Babbasa plans to grow its services to both young people and employers to respond to the pressing imperative to overcome the structural barriers to workforce inclusion and associated social inequalities in Bristol and beyond.

 

The Mentoring Programme was created in response to an increasing need from the young people we served for inclusive, personalised, and professional 1:1 mentoring support. The Mentoring Programme now works with over 120 Equal Opportunity Ambassadors who can offer 1:1 mentoring sessions, group mentoring, skills sessions and workshops, as well as support Babbasa in our wider initiatives, programmes and events. The programme works with over 120 young people per year, supporting them with everything from their school studies, to job hunting, to skill development, to university applications, to wider wellbeing and confidence building and is an extremely valuable addition to our support offer here at Bababsa often collaborating with our other programmes. 

 

Job Purpose

 

The Mentoring Programme Lead is an exciting and important role that leads delivery of Babbasa’s Mentoring Programme – a vital part of the offer of support available to young people at Babbasa. The Mentoring Programme offers personalised, 1:1 mentoring for young people from a professional in an industry of their interest with a focus on developing key soft skills and progression into work, enterprise or education. 

 

At Babbasa we have the privilege of working with a large group of Equal Opportunity Ambassadors (EOAs) from a wide range of personal and professional backgrounds who offer their time voluntarily to support our young people in this way. Through mentoring our young people have been supported to improve their school grades, secure work experience, start their own business, apply for university and more. Young people who seek personal (life skills) and professional (career progression) mentoring are identified through Babbasa’s other programmes e.g. the Challenge Programme and Recruitment Programme, as well as through our partnerships with Education institutions such as Cabot Learning Federation, City of Bristol College and SGS College. 

 

The Mentoring Programme Lead will therefore work closely with colleagues across the entire services team, external stakeholders such as our EOAs, as well as key education and community partners to deliver a high quality support offer for young people across Bristol.  The Mentoring Programme Lead will coordinate 1:1 and group mentoring activities as part of their core programme delivery, as well lead on engaging our EOAs in wider skill building sessions, workshops, and events as part of Babbasa’s wider support offer, and undertake mentoring commissions and activities that come through our core partners or other external clients. The Mentoring Programme Lead will need to work collaboratively across the team and will play an active role in promoting Babbasa’s support offer to a wide range of young people across the city. 

 

Core Responsibilities

• Build trusting relationships (based on the Babbasa manifesto) with young people to ensure we meet their progression outcomes and identify/address any health and safety, disability, equality, concerns or welfare issues.

• Participate in outreach activities to promote the Mentoring Programme as well as Babbasa’s wider support offer and actively recruit and onboard young people to Babbasa and the Mentoring Programme.

• Design, deliver, and facilitate Babbasa’s mentee and mentor induction sessions to ensure clear communication of the programme structure, requirements, and benefits. 
• Coordinate the Mentoring Programme’s core activities including registering interested mentees, matching them with a suitable mentor, coordinating meetings, supervising these meetings where appropriate, and completing effective evaluations of the programme.

• Liaise with the wider base of Equal Opportunity Ambassadors; successfully facilitating their engagement in Babbasa’s wider activities from workshops in schools, to large-scale corporate events, to informal skills sessions. 
• Complete regular progress reviews and evaluations of the Mentoring Programme with beneficiaries and Equal Opportunity Ambassadors ensuring key data related to external funder reports are captured as well as fulfilling internal monitoring requirements. 
• Produce reports of activities to be presented to external clients, partners, and funders as needed.

 

General Responsibilities

• Ensure young peoples’ comments, voices and suggestions are at the heart of service delivery and respond to their needs.
• Ensure internal administrative tasks and reports are completed in a timely and accurate manner as required by Babbasa and the activity funder.
• Deliver support and guidance to participants using best practice.
• To attend and take part in all core Babbasa meetings.

 

Person Specification

Skills and Abilities

• Good organisation and time management skills, able to manage their own workload effectively, meet deadlines, monitor outcomes and achieve targets.

• Strong coordination skills – able to deliver activities, events, and initiatives that involve multiple stakeholders and beneficiaries to clear timelines that meet agreed outcomes or deliverables. 
• Strong verbal and presentation skills with the ability to communicate information in an engaging and concise manner. 

• Able to provide young people with enjoyable, stimulating and challenging experiences.
• Able to provide young people with appropriate information, advice, support and challenge, and refer them to specialist help when required.
• Able to establish and maintain positive relationships with young people, including agreeing limits for acceptable behaviour and being a positive role model. 
• Prepared to work flexibly, including evenings, weekends and other unsocial hours.
• Able to build strong collaborative relationships with a variety of internal and external stakeholders including: Equal Opportunity Ambassadors, young people, education bodies, community organisations, and corporate partners.
• Strong written communication skills with experience of report writing and demonstrable skill crafting clear narratives to funders and external bodies. 

 

Knowledge and Experience

• Experience of stakeholder management across different levels of seniority and sector
• Experience delivering youth programmes including coordinating external activities
• Knowledge of or interest in Equality and Inclusion.

• Experience of working with young people aged 16-30.
• Experience of using a variety of evaluation tools and methods.
• Experience of working with or across agencies.
• An understanding of the principles and implementation of Equality and Inclusion, Child Protection and Safeguarding Policies.
• Experience of using a variety of information technology and the ability to maintain records on a database, and proven previous experience producing high quality reports to external bodies or funders.

• A willingness to complete further relevant qualifications or training

 

Desirable

• Driving licence and access to a car

 

Incentives/ Benefits

• Work in an inclusive environment and supportive team who will support you to be great
• Have the opportunity to demonstrate your enterprise skills by being part of the development of a new business unit
• Work for one of the few organisations in the UK honoured with Queen’s Award For Enterprise for Promoting Opportunity
• Be part of transforming the lives of low-income and ethnic minority young people in Bristol
• Help Bristol to become an inclusive city by directly working with us to address inequalities
• Have access to flexi-working arrangements
• Have access to hybrid working arrangements
• 31 days annual leave including public holidays

 

Next Steps

If you are interested in working with us and would like to find out more about this role or have any questions, we’d love to hear from you.

 

How to apply: 

 

• Please send a CV and cover letter outlining your suitability for the role to people@byep.org.uk (Note: all applications will be anonymised before being presented to a shortlisting panel)
• Please complete our Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form HERE

 

The deadline to apply is Friday 29th September at 5pm. 

 

Shortlisting will be conducted w/c 2nd October, with in-person interviews scheduled for w/c 9th October. 

 

If you have any questions on the role please contact Louise Goux-Wirth, Assistant Services Manager at louise.goux-wirth@byep.org.uk. Further information about Babbasa can be found here: www.babbasa.com.