About Us Our Story

Every day, hundreds of young people are going to school facing issues they can’t deal with alone… issues like anxiety, bullying, low self-esteem, exam stress, difficulty forming friendships and poor behaviour choices.

Many of these young people tell us that they don’t have an adult in their lives that they can talk to. Now more than ever these young people need someone who will listen to them- really listen to them. Sadly, the burgeoning adolescent mental health crisis means that traditional school support structures are increasingly overwhelmed by the rising demand for help. We felt compelled to try to bridge this gap and so the CROPS Mentoring project was formed.

Our vision is to see hundreds of young people’s lives changed every year through a meaningful 1:1 engagement with a mentor.

How we help

CROPS Mentoring recruits, trains and supervises volunteer mentors who wish to help young people in local Peterborough secondary schools who are going through difficult periods of their lives. They meet students in their schools on a weekly basis to support them through the issues they face.

We provide trained and experienced mentors to meet and talk sensitively and confidentially with a young person, giving them the time and space to reflect. Together they can work towards developing strategies for the issues the student is facing now, and in doing so build resilience for the future.

According to a survey commissioned by the Mental Health Foundation in 2018, ’more than 1 in 10 children aged between 10 and 15 say they have no one to talk to or wouldn't talk to anyone in school if they felt worried or sad‘

Why are we called CROPS Mentoring?

CROPS Mentoring is a project run by the charity CROPS (Charity no: 1157651) For more information about CROPS please visit www.crops.org.uk

Meet the team

Chris, our mentoring lead and has over 20 years of experience in working with young people and volunteers in schools and charities and brings his passion, knowledge and experience to the task of coordinating the mentoring project. Chris trains and supervises the team of volunteer mentors. Several other volunteers are office based, helping with the administrative tasks associated with the project.