National Mentoring Day was launched to recognise the significant benefits of mentoring across the UK and takes place on October 27th each year.

The RACHP industry mentoring scheme – Thermentor.org - piloted earlier this year is starting a fresh matching period to coincide National Mentoring Day.  Applications are being accepted to act as mentor or to be a mentee between now and the end of the year, with the next mentoring cycle starting in January 2017.

Founded by Steve Gill as part of the Sustain Ability Project, the mentoring scheme was greeted enthusiastically by the industry and has now successfully completed two mentoring cycles as part of the initial pilot.

Mr Gill said: “We have run two pilot cycles so far of twelve weeks duration each.  This has involved three mentors and eleven mentees.  It has been a learning curve for all of us, and we are still learning and improving the programme.  We are now confident enough to expand the scope to include some overseas participation and also greatly increase the number of mentors/mentees. At the moment we have interest from ten potential new mentors.”

The scheme is not linked to any one industry organisation or body, and has been started by volunteers who see the potential that the benefits that mentoring can bring. 

Mr Gill added: “These are people from the industry who want to make a difference by helping others within the industry who are earlier in their careers. It is volunteers wanting to ‘put something back in. In truth, all involved have also found it a rewarding experience.”

Many observers of the RACHP industry have been concerned by the apparent aging demographics of industry members. This has coincided with changing work patterns which means that many people now work for smaller organisations or even as sole traders.  These trends combine to restrict knowledge transfer in the traditional work-place colleague to colleague manner. Coupled with the possibilities to connect with people outside the work place by the growth of social media this creates the perfect ingredients for an industry wide e-mentoring scheme, which Thermentor .org is.

A new website will be online soon, but in the meantime, anyone wanting to learn more about the scheme or to register an interest to join the matching process should contact Steve Gill by email at steve@sustain-ability.network