By William Moncrieff, Communications Coordinator
The latest cohort has just been accepted onto the Young Start programme. This time around the programme is experiencing a first, with two former mentees becoming mentors.
One mentee-turned-mentor is Laura Pilkington. Laura joined the programme back in 2018 and is excited to get started.
“The last few years I think I’ve developed into more leadership skills and roles, and I really wanted to give something back. I just wanted to use my skills and my experiences to support someone else and give back in that sense.”
This desire to give back and share experiences is something that mentee-turned-mentor, Gemma Lumsdaine, agrees with: “I am hoping that through my own experience that I have developed through a number of things within my career and also my lived experience and understanding will help support young people.”
The Young Start programme is a year-long opportunity that helps young individuals aged between 16 – 24 with physical, learning and sensory disabilities throughout Scotland, to develop their confidence and coaching skills. The Young Start programme will help mentees gain a coaching qualification or equivalent CPD. The young people will have a mentor that will support them throughout the experience. For Laura, who was at university at the time, this was one of her highlights.
“I had quite low confidence, so I was doing this course and I didn’t think I was able to do it. So being able to speak to my mentee about things and get that support with what I was learning was really good.”
Along with gaining access to and working through a coaching qualification, the year provided lots more for Laura and Gemma.
“I thought the experience was great and for me the skills that I learnt and particularly the workshops are things I’ve used to this day”, said gemma.
“They have been fundamental in helping me get to where I am career wise.”
Laura agreed with this, explaining: “I know the qualification is one of the big things with the programme, but I think the soft skills that you get throughout it, like confidence, communication, leadership skills and meeting other people with a disability is one of the main things about the programme.”
For many people the programme has helped progress and find a new passion or career.
“The programme gave me so much and if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have got involved with so many things. I think that it was really the steppingstone to getting me so involved in disability sport”, shared Laura.
For Laura, the programme also helped her in many other ways. “Near the end when I was on the Young Start, I actually left Aberdeen and university and I moved home and that is when I transferred (Universities). I was struggling quite a lot when I was in Aberdeen and having a programme like the Young Start to do and have that purpose and to feel like I was contributing to something was good.”
The available opportunities through the programme for young disabled individuals in sport, is what Gemma views as being key, with it being reported that 2% of the qualified coaching workforce has a disability.
“I think the programme is so important. We know the statistics around the lack of representation around the sports workforce and so programmes like this are a massive enabler”, said Gemma.
“It’s so important to have people with lived experience at the forefront, particularly when looking at mentorship.”
The mentors play such an important role in the year. This is why Gemma is keen to progress on with her mentee: “I’ve known mine for a very long time, they are involved in the sports group I go to. I think it will be good because although I’ve known them for a long time, we will find out new things about each other and we will push each other to learn.”
Although Laura doesn’t know her mentee from before, she is looking forward to helping them throughout their journey.
“For me, it’s developing that relationship and trying to find out what their goals are and how I can support them to get towards that.”
Laura views the year as not only being an opportunity for the mentees to learn but for the mentors to find out new knowledge. Laura said: “I think that working with the other mentors and learning from them will be really beneficial.”