IAF celebrates a decade in partnership with Mansfield Building Society

Mansfield Building Society have been longstanding partners of IAF since the beginnings of it's Charitable Trust in 2015 and as one of their first grant recipients, IAF has had the pleasure of watching the trust become a force for positive change in Nottinghamshire. Since those early days, MBS has helped us to deliver mentoring to many young people in Mansfield, ensuring those most vulnerable have support in place to navigate complex personal barrier such as addiction, debt, poor mental health and learning difficulties. We've supported hundreds of young people over the years and our shared enthusiasm for youth employment has allowed us to embed MBS' input across our service user journeys. Dylan, aged 20, reflects on one such experience where he completed a mock interview for a business admin role;

"I was nervous that day as I had no idea what to expect from the interview. I felt ready but wasn't sure if I'd perform well. After it was over, I found the interview feedback helpful and I used it to determine what I need to improve on for future applications. Thank you MBS for volunteering your time - it has helped me grown as a person and improved my abilities!"

Working collaboratively to create opportunities for young people to develop their skills and make supported transitions into education, employment and training is at the heart of partnership and the team at MBS showed such solidarity with our beneficiaries that we have even co-developed a 1-2-1 corporate mentoring scheme for job-ready individuals. Piloting this project with MBS allowed us to match young people with an MBS employee who gave an hour per month to catching up with their mentee and helping them to navigate their early-career experiences. A friendly face to check in, advise on work/life balance and ensure that reasonable adjustments were in place proved really valuable for those enrolled in the pilot programme; most of the young people supported through this initiative have sustained employment and are building very successful careers in their respective industries.

Our shared vision of empowering young people has allowed us to embed MBS staff at various points in the participants learning journey. For some, this meant volunteering alongside our young people as they worked to make a shared space more community friendly, whilst others gave their time to support learners in creating personalised CVs as part of careers week. It’s been truly heart-warming to see MBS staff coming along to graduation ceremonies over the years, celebrating the achievements of our service users and getting to see first-hand their legacy of their support.