By Colleen Pinto | Communications Lead
What’s Happened Since Our Campaign Began
Since we launched our Giving Tuesday 2025 campaign with the goal of raising $10,000 to sustain our mentorship programmes, we’ve continued to deepen the impact of our work supporting young people transitioning from care and facing disadvantage in South Africa and the UK.
We focused our efforts on strengthening mentorship quality—from training new volunteer mentors to enhancing relational support structures that help mentees gain confidence, build life skills, and develop a clearer path toward independence.
During this period:
New mentor training cohorts were delivered, giving volunteers the tools and confidence needed to support young people in weekly one-to-one mentoring sessions.
We increased programme engagement across both the UK and South Africa, helping more young people build life skills such as decision-making, emotional resilience, and career planning.
Our online e-mentorship model continued to remove geographical barriers, enabling global volunteer participation and sustained relationships between mentors and mentees.
These efforts ensure that the values of consistency, support, and relational depth are upheld for every young person we serve.
Key Results / Metrics
While we continue collecting final figures from the Giving Tuesday campaign, here are early impact indicators from this period:
Mentorship Engagement
Weekly one-to-one mentoring relationships continued to provide consistent guidance over 7-9 month cycles for mentees in both South Africa and the UK.
Volunteer Training
New mentors completed structured training incorporating behavioural science, relational skills, and best practices for positive change support.
Community Reach
Our scaled e-mentorship model continues to remove access barriers, connecting young people with mentors across countries, not just locally.
We’ll be publishing more detailed data in our 2025 annual report, including numbers of mentees served, mentors trained, and stories of measurable outcomes.
Challenges & How We’re Responding
A consistent challenge has been mentor recruitment and retention during peak fundraising seasons. While interest remains high, we’ve found that expanding support and personalised onboarding increases conversion. In response, we have:
Boosted mentor recruitment campaigns via social media and newsletters.
Strengthened onboarding support with additional workgroups and Masterclass sessions for new and returning volunteers.
This helps ensure mentors feel equipped, supported, and confident as they commit their time.
Your generosity transforms lives. It fuels consistent, life-changing mentorship that builds confidence, grows young people's skills, and opens new possibilities where none seemed to exist. Thank you for being a part of SAYes.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
