About Us
Aims
Bridging the Gap Mentoring aims to break the cycle of offending, homelessness and addiction by offering trained volunteer mentors to people at risk of offending, including people who are homeless or addicted.
Friendly support from someone who is concerned about them individually can help people to rebuild their lives, increase their confidence and move away from homelessness, addiction and offending.
We want to expand the provision of mentoring in North London so that a substantial proportion of homeless people and the 1800 people who come before the courts each year have the option of support from a mentor.
According to our constitution our legal aims are:
News
Newsletter May 2021
Dear Friend, Welcome to our Bridging the Gap Islington Newsletter – explaining how we help people through effective mentoring. We are delighted to share with you our new video! We hope that the video will explain how we can support people through regular meetings with...
Newsletter April 2021
Dear Friend, Welcome to our Bridging the Gap Islington Newsletter – explaining how we help people through effective mentoring. We are delighted that our outreach and...
Newsletter March 2021
Dear Friend, Welcome to our Bridging the Gap Islington Newsletter – explaining how we help people through effective mentoring. Our volunteers can support people in 15 languages Bridging the Gap...
Membership
Membership is open to individuals and organisations who are concerned about helping people in difficulties to rebuild their lives and believe, like we do, in the importance of personal support. Together we can do more, please join. Membership does not cost anything and does not commit you to doing anything. It simply means that we keep in touch with you and you have the opportunity to influence the work of Bridging the Gap Mentoring at our AGM each year.
We believe we can provide a better service by learning from the people directly involved in providing the service and people with lived experience. So we are particularly keen for mentors and service users to join Bridging the Gap Mentoring as members.
Just send us a request to join using the contact form or email to [email protected], giving your contact details.
History of Bridging the Gap Islington to Mentoring
Bridging the Gap Mentoring started off as “Bridging the Gap Islington” and this remains the legal name of the organisation. We adopted Bridging the Gap Mentoring as a working name in 2021 because it reflected the reality that we provide a service to North London, not just to Islington.
The group that was to form the core of Bridging the Gap Islington first met during 2012, with the aim of working with people at risk of offending. After some initial discussions they decided to consider setting up a mentoring service and held two consultation events with local services offering related services during 2012. Bridging the Gap Islington became a formally constituted organisation in December 2012.
The initial training for mentors was run in May and June 2013. However, contacting service users and getting DBS checks took longer than expected and the first mentoring partnerships did not start until 2014. During this time there was a lot of work on drawing up agreed policies and methods of operation. This not only helped to build confidence in the organisation but also enabled Bridging the Gap Mentoring to meet the Approved Provider Standard of the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation in early 2015.
Bridging the Gap Islington was formally re-constituted as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO no 1162671) in July 2015. We adopted the working name of Bridging the Gap Mentoring in 2021. We have continued to provide a professionally supervised volunteer mentoring service for people who are at risk of offending, homelessness or addiction. While the basis of our service remains similar to our original plans, we continue to seek ways to improve our service and make it more relevant and more accessible.