Grandmentors Milton Keynes and their Big Broth on ITV News Anglia!

Our Grandmentors Milton Keynes project held a ‘soft matching’ event in partnership with MK Community Fridge on Thursday, as featured on ITV News Anglia.

Potential volunteers and mentees came together at Unity Park Station to make big batches of soup, which were then served up and sold to raise money for the station and Centrepoint. The Big Broth was a brilliant event for our Grandmentors to take part in, with volunteers and mentees making a positive contribution to the community whilst meeting each other informally. This method of soft matching volunteers with beneficiaries has many benefits, as outlined by new Volunteer Manager Kelly, who manages the project in Milton Keynes. In her Linkedin article, she says:

‘By facilitating the mentors and mentees to come together in a relaxing, fun and innovative way, the relationships between them form organically. They mutually get to know one another, figure out how the other people tick, find common ground, likes and dislikes, mutual trust forms – an essential part of the mentor-mentee relationship – and the birth of a truly transformational relationship begins.’

We’d like to thank the team at MK Community Fridge for partnering with us for the Big Broth event, and for providing us with the donation of surplus food, their time and resources. The location – the Unity Park Station – is a project organised by the charity Winter Night Shelter. Every year, between the coldest months of December and March, WNS open the doors of local churches and community centres to house the city’s homeless overnight.

Find out more about Grandmentors

Read Article