Guardian angel

As a trainee it is always positive to get involved with initiatives that have your firm's backing. My firm provides loads of opportunities to get involved with community pro bono and voluntary work, and their work with Hackney schools is very popular with trainees.

Building bridges

The Hackney Schools Mentoring Scheme links 14- and 15-year-olds in Hackney with adults working across the city. At CMS Cameron McKenna trainees are given a presentation on all voluntary and pro bono opportunities in their first few weeks and the Hackney schools scheme is on the map right from the word go.

Students are matched either one-to-one with mentors or are put into small groups. Meeting arrangements are flexible, but the aim is for students to travel to the firm's offices for an hour or two once a fortnight.

Mentors receive initial training but the real direction for meetings comes from the students themselves. The scheme is open to year 10 pupils in Hackney and is entirely voluntary. The result is a highly motivated and diverse group.

A key thing to remember is that it's not school! More than anything else, a mentor is there to talk to. The girls I mentored liked to talk through their concerns about school and home, but were also desperate to spend an afternoon on office tasks '“ they loved it.

It was great to see the sense of purpose and achievement they found in completing tasks, and taking admin off the secretaries' desks will never do you any harm.

The scheme asks for an academic year's commitment, but most mentors stay in touch with their students much longer than that, and that is the real hope of the scheme; to develop friendships between the most unlikely of people, helping increase opportunities and broaden horizons both for students and mentors.

There is a real sense of achievement to be gained from seeing your group of students improve in confidence, raise their goals and start chasing something new '“ and it is never a bad thing to have colleagues across the firm know your name.

Volunteering for the Hackney Schools Reading and Numbers Scheme gives you the option of helping 11-year-olds with either their reading or their mathematics.

The level of support you offer varies massively from child to child and when you consider that they are all taught at the same level in classes your chance to help them on a one-to-one basis is invaluable. They are about to take their SATs and make the big leap to secondary school, they are understandably nervous about the situation.

Feelgood factor

The scheme is not just about the academics; chatting to them about their concerns and how exciting school can be definitely makes up a large part of it.

The girl I was helping was really worried about being overwhelmed at secondary school but I think that by the end of term she was almost looking forward to it. I did not do anything special, just talked to her about anything she wanted '“ something I do not think she was comfortable doing with everyone else. It definitely helps that you're not their teacher.

The benefits are not just for the children involved, on a personal level the chance to escape reading 100-page documents, talking to someone who regarded me as their elder and, of course, the chance to test my 15-year, out-of-date maths skills were a massive bonus!

On a wider scale the opportunity to actually help someone achieve a goal they set themselves or even just to watch them improve and come out of their shell a little is very uplifting '“ you always leave with a smile on your face at the end of the session.

The scheme is advertised on the intranet and there are opportunities to be involved in other schemes. The organisers are always on the lookout for new faces or even just people that are willing to step in and cover if you cannot commit to every week.

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