Meet the Mancunian - Talking mentoring the youth with Victoria Ramsden

Meet the Mancunian-7.3-Victoria Ramsden transcript

Intro

[00:00:00] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Hello and a warm Mancunian welcome to you today. I'm Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe, your host, and it's an honour to share Season 7 of the Meet the Mancunian podcast: social impact stories from Manchester with you. This season is all about celebrating the stories of our local changemakers and the profound social impact they are creating.

Every Tuesday, I shine a spotlight on the incredible individuals weaving the fabric of our community, from grassroots heroes to local legends, their stories are the soul of Manchester.

Whether you're tuning in on Apple, Spotify, Google, or www.meetthemancunian.co.uk. Get ready for a season that showcases the incredible social impact within our community.

Welcome to the third episode of season seven of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, social impact stories from Manchester.

Passionate about supporting the youth, we hear from Victoria Ramsden, mentor, Bolton Lads and Girls Club in this episode.

This week is Time to Talk Day on 1 February 2024. Time to Talk Day is the UK's biggest mental health conversation. A day for friends, families, communities, and workplaces to come together to talk, listen and change lives. Who will you reach out to this week?

Episode 7.3

Hi Victoria, thank you so much for taking the time today. Really interested to know more about the work you're doing with Bolton Lads and Girls Club.

[00:01:38] Victoria Ramsden: Thank you so much for having me. I can't believe you just told me that I'm your 73rd guest. Wow. Impressive.

[00:01:46] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Really happy to have you here today, Victoria, and all cozy to both of us, keeping warm.

[00:01:52] Victoria Ramsden: I know. Yeah. Look at us both in our cozies. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:56] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Really excited about hearing all about it but start with telling us about your passion for the youth. Where did that start?

[00:02:02] Victoria Ramsden: When I was growing up, my mum had many jobs. My dad left us and mum was the parent who stayed. And she supported us by doing everything that she could. But one thing she did that was really inspiring was she also did youth work. It's not a particularly well-paid sector, but it was obvious she had passion for it and a flair for it.

And she'd come home and tell us stories about the things that she'd been doing and the people that she'd supported. And I think that kind of permeated my own thoughts a little bit. And then as an adult, I was looking for something to do within the community.

I've got a really great life that I've built. I've got hobbies. I'm in a choir. I have a good job, but I felt like something was missing. And for me, that was being a part of my community and giving something back.

I tried working with Age Concern and befriending old people. And I got paired with a wonderful lady in my local village. And we had a great friendship. Unfortunately, she died. And I found that really heart-breaking. And I took a little bit of time to reflect. Is this something that I want to continue with? Or is there something that I could do that's a little bit different?

[00:03:19] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you so much for sharing that. It's really inspiring that your mom was in youth work and that got you interested. And you could see the value of what was being done. And then also to know about your other work in the community.

Tell us how you got involved with Bolton Lad and Girls Club where you're actually a mentor with them. Tell us about that. You said you were looking on the internet.

[00:03:39] Victoria Ramsden: I looked on the internet for some local opportunities. Anyone who's from Bolton, I think, is aware of Bolton Lads and Girls Club in some way, shape or form. They do so much within the Bolton community.

Found the opportunity to be a mentor on their website, and I read the description and thought it sounded like something that would be suitable for me. There were lots of different opportunities to work within the actual youth club itself with the children and the young people leading play activities.

But to be honest, Deepa, I'm not the kind of person who enjoys a lot of children in one place at once. They're so exuberant and loud. And it's wonderful, but that doesn't suit everybody, does it? I'm much more comfortable one to one, and so that's why mentoring spoke to me personally.

[00:04:30] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Tell us a little bit about the Bolton Lad and Girls Club. What do they do? You said that it's well established in Bolton because we have listeners from all across the UK and all across the world. Can you introduce it a little bit?

[00:04:43] Victoria Ramsden: Bolton Lads and Girls Club is essentially a youth club. And there are people who can talk a lot more eloquently about the history of the club. I'm relatively new to being involved with them and in such a small way. But they do exactly what you would expect them to do. They support the young people within the Bolton community.

Bolton's a pretty big place. And there are a lot of young people who do need that support and they have so many different services. They run drop in youth clubs. They have dance classes, gyms, they do outreach work, they take the kids away, they have football teams, they've got a recording studio. They have a lot of famous people who support them now, as well as local businesses who sponsor them.

They're constantly trying to do activities to raise money for the club because they get such limited funding. They predominantly run on volunteer donations; I believe. And they've got permanent paid staff there, but they've got a whole band of volunteers who support them to be able to deliver their services as well.

[00:05:54] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that, Victoria. And then when you talk about your work as a mentor, what does that entail? And are there any challenges you've had to face and then overcome?

[00:06:03] Victoria Ramsden: Oh God, absolutely. So being a mentor as I said, it really suits me because you are matched with a young person. And then you are in a long-term relationship with that young person.

So it's specifically young people who are in care, and that could be that they've been taken away from their parents, and they live with an extended member of their family. Or they could be with a foster placement, or they could even be in a children's home.

And you give two hours every two weeks, approximately. It's such a small amount of time when you think about it, and you build a relationship with that young person. The idea is that you show the young person that you can create a meaningful, positive relationship with an adult, that will then help them move through their future life once they leave care.

Some of the challenges that I've had. I think the main one was, the first young person that I was matched with, she was so incredibly vulnerable, and she had so much going on in her life.

She was in care, she was in a long-term foster placement, but that ended and she got moved to a family placement, but it was so short term. And then she got moved into a children's home, and it was all in such a short space of time. I can't even begin to imagine how she felt going through that.

And I was the one person that was constant throughout that experience. I learned a lot about her, and we built up a really trusting relationship. She was also going through some really difficult things in terms of men who were sexually exploiting her at the time. She was bullied at school. It was really difficult and this was my first match. And, I'd never experienced anything like that before.

And obviously, I'd built a really trusting relationship with this young person and having to see what she was going through. And then, of course you think about it, don't you? It's not the time that you spend with that young person, it's the time afterwards. When you're sat there thinking about this young person, what they're having to go through. And I almost felt helpless. I was like how can I even begin to support this person? How can I help them?

It felt almost impossible but of course, it wasn't impossible. Because just by being there and just by being consistent. And for over 18 months, we were together. Just showing up every two weeks and having a walk and a chat. And sometimes we did something a little bit different. But to be honest, it was mainly just walks and chats, but by doing that I was providing her just a safe space just for that short period of time. But she knew she'd get that safe space again.

So, I learned a lot and the club were amazing. They supported me so much through that. They talked to me about care and what can happen in care. And why a young person is in care. They talked to me about how could I support someone. They gave me reassurance when it felt hopeless, that it's not hopeless and they kept me going. And I couldn't have done it without the support of the mentoring team at Bolton Lads and Girls Club.

And I got so much respect for them during that time period because I thought how can they see this every day? I'm seeing it with one person. How can they see this every single day with so many young people and still be the amazing, positive beacons of hope that they are for the community. It absolutely blew me away.

[00:09:41] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you so much for sharing that, Victoria. It sounds like you were really there. Like you said, that safe space, that constant stability through all the turmoil and the moves that this person was going through. And I'm so sorry to hear of her experiences, but unfortunately, this is true of many people.

[00:10:01] Victoria Ramsden: It happens.

[00:10:02] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: It's really great that there's support from both from the wider Bolton Youth Club as well as from the work you were doing as her mentor. And I think that's really powerful.

I've seen that in India when I used to volunteer with a charity which worked with slum people. I was the mentoring coordinator. And we used to pair them up with diplomats or with corporates employees and just give them opportunities to look at people who, their jobs, understand what's happening, go for a movie, go just have a bit of exposure to life beyond the constraints in which they were living. And that was again so powerful because many of them were taking their first steps into formal education. For many generations had not been to college, so I totally understand.

Can you tell us about a little bit about the impact you've made so far? This could be you yourself, or it could be about the Bolton Lad and Girls Club. Obviously for this one person, you made a lot of impact.

[00:11:04] Victoria Ramsden: The thing I always say with mentoring is it's incredibly difficult to measure the impact. Because sometimes it can appear like such a small thing, but actually it's huge. And when I've spoken to the people who work at Bolton Lads and Girls Club on the mentoring team, it's something that they also say it's really difficult to talk to corporate sponsors about the mentoring service because people like results, don't they? They like things to be quantifiable and that's not always the case.

With the first person that I was matched with, the impact that I saw after 18 months was this person was able to go up to Starbucks to the counter on their own and order their own drink. They absolutely could not do that before, and that was amazing to see that happen. And it showed that their confidence had grown so much.

With the second person I was matched with, we were only matched for six months, because by the end of the six months, they felt like they were able to advocate for themselves. They were able to say, with confidence, in personal relationships and also at school, what it was that they wanted and what they believe should happen. And that was amazing to see.

And the person that I'm matched with now, the impact that I've seen is they now take time to think about the impact and the consequences of their actions and. Again, if you'd said to me six months ago, would that young person ever get to that point, I probably would have said, I'm not sure, but they're there now.

The impact it might seem small, but it's the ramifications, the ripples of that throughout the rest of their life will hopefully be quite big.

[00:12:49] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I think that's really powerful, isn't it? Really helping people through a tricky period, through a challenging period. And giving them principles and values in use to then navigate the rest of their life. Amazing and hats off to you and all the other mentors for doing this great work.

[00:13:05] Victoria Ramsden: Thanks.

[00:13:06] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: How can interested people reach out to you and learn more? Where can they find you? Where can they find Bolton Lad and Girls Club?

[00:13:13] Victoria Ramsden: Just search for Bolton Lads and Girls Club on the internet. They've actually got a big waiting list of young people at the moment, so I know that they're actively recruiting for more mentors and also independent visitors, which is a little bit like a mentor. But every local authority has got a statutory right to provide young people in care with an independent visitor and Bolton's Lads and Girls Club helps with that. And it's essentially a mentor, but with a little bit more advocacy on behalf of the young person.

You can look on their website or they have got an email address, which is volunteering@bglc.co.uk.

[00:13:50] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that and I'll be sure to include the website in the show notes.

[00:13:55] Victoria Ramsden: Thank you.

[00:13:56] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: What advice would you have for people looking to do something similar in their local community, so they want to volunteer as a mentor, or they want to be part of a youth club in some way? How do they get started?

[00:14:10] Victoria Ramsden: First of all, I would say you don't have to do anything huge. You can just do something small, like with mentoring, it's two hours every two weeks. So I think most people have got some free time to do that. I think the time that you give versus the impact that it has on you personally in your life you, it's unbelievable.

Be brave, find something that you think is a good fit for you. If you try something and it doesn't work, like I did with the Age Concern, it's not that it didn't work, but actually, there was something that was a better fit out there for me. And four years later, I'm still doing the mentoring with Bolton Lads and Girls Club.

Just be brave and give it a go. Everybody's got something to give.

[00:14:56] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you. And I like what you said about finding what's right for you and what's a fit for you, because that's so important. That keeps the passion alive, isn't it?

[00:15:04] Victoria Ramsden: Absolutely.

[00:15:04] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: An opportunity for you to talk about anything I haven't asked you about, anything coming up, or anything you'd like to do a shout out for.

[00:15:11] Victoria Ramsden: I think the only thing I want to call out is if you're in and around the Bolton area, look up Bolton lads and girls club and just see if there is anything that you can contribute because they are such a worthwhile cause.

[00:15:25] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you so much, Victoria.

I'm now going to the signature questions I ask all my guests, and this is Meet the Mancunian, so please can you describe the Mancunian in a word or a phrase?

[00:15:36] Victoria Ramsden: The Mancunian spirit is just fantastic. So, I think the word that I settled on was diverse. And I'm sure people have probably used that word before. But I think, Greater Manchester is so vast.

I think, people have got different accents from one street to the next. There are so many distinctive cultures from all the different people that have chosen to make Manchester their home. And these kind of all come together to create such a magical place that enables creativity to flourish.

And I don't think this can be replicated anywhere else in the world. I'm such a massive fan of Manchester.

[00:16:14] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you, and I think that is a good word, and it's not quite been said in that way before, so you are relatively unique in that. And it is quite a magical place, you're very right. It's a lovely mix of community and cultures and proud history, and also doing it slightly differently, isn't it? That's something I hear a lot.

Can you share a Mancunian who inspires you and tell us why.

[00:16:40] Victoria Ramsden: I went with someone famous. My influential Mancunian is Emmeline Pankhurst, and she's always forefront in my mind as a strong feminist, but also as the building where I work is very close to the Emmeline Pankhurst statue in Manchester. And just a little quick fact about statues, so there are most of the statues in the UK are of men, 6 percent of the statues are of animals, and then only 4 percent are of women.

I'll just leave that there, but I think the thing I like about Emmeline Pankhurst for me is she wasn't perfect at all. She had a lot of flaws. But she is representative of that rebellious Mancunian spirit, and I think Mancunians were not prepared to accept the status quo, and we are unafraid to challenge authority for something better. So, she embodies that for me.

[00:17:35] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That's really interesting. And we found out that we're soon going to be office buddies, aren't we? Because I'm going to be moving your office. I think probably soon after this podcast is out, so that'd be nice.

[00:17:47] Victoria Ramsden: So you can say hello to Emmeline Pankhurst every morning.

[00:17:50] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That would be lovely and she's very inspiring for me as well. I think she's, really a beacon of good hope as we would say and got a lot of focus on getting women equal rights and the right to vote and many other things, so absolutely.

What's the most important life lesson you've learned so far?

[00:18:10] Victoria Ramsden: I think the most important life lesson for me is to not let people who've hurt you in the past limit your future. Their impacts, of course, will play a part in defining you, but I think you have to allow your true self to push past that in order to flourish. And this ties in with the mentoring that I do because these young people have had their adults really hurt them in the past.

And potentially have a negative impact on them, but the mentoring, I believe, allows them to find true meaning in a healthy relationship, and therefore not allow those past relationships to define their future.

[00:18:51] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you, Victoria, and I think that's a really good lesson, because it's like you learn the lessons from the past, but you don't let that limit you or necessarily even shape your future. I always think you can be anything you want to be. Just go for it.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

[00:19:10] Victoria Ramsden: I think this is really cheesy actually, but I wish that everybody I spoke to or had contact with walked away feeling joy. I think finding even the tiniest bit of joy in everyday life is so important and that's what I wish my superpower could be, that everybody could feel that.

[00:19:31] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: It's a lovely superpower and I think the world, we talked a little earlier about spreading a bit of joy for the podcast or spreading a bit of good news. That's a lovely superpower to have and I hope it can come true because I'd love to be getting that joy from you.

Is there a funny story or a heart-warming story you'd like to share with listeners to end the podcast?

[00:19:52] Victoria Ramsden: I'm going for like a heart-warming story rather than a funny story. My good friend Sarah's got three absolutely adorable children. And she told me that one morning she walked into the playroom and she observed. Two of them, so Evelyn and Esme, and they were playing really happily together.

And just for a little bit of context, Evelyn's five and Esme's four. So my friend said to them what are you playing girls? And Evelyn said, I'm being Aunty Victoria. And Esme said, I'm being Aunty Jo. And When Sarah told me this story, I was absolutely bowled over that these two effervescent little girls were playing me and my friend Jo.

And I think it just shows that children and young people, they're observing us all the time. And they're taking their example from us in how to be in the world. And It was a reminder that we've always got to try our utmost to be the best versions of ourselves. Because you never know who's watching.

[00:20:52] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That is so powerful. Like you said, we're always being role models and can we be our best self? That is a lovely note to end the podcast on.

Thank you so much, Victoria. It's been lovely to talk to you today.

[00:21:04] Victoria Ramsden: Thanks for having me! What a lovely way to spend a Sunday morning.

Outro

Victoria, I really enjoyed learning about supporting the youth today.

Next week on Tuesday 6th February 2024, I speak to Jesmin Chowdhury about social justice.

Dear listener, I hope you were inspired by today's episode and it sparks your passion to make change happen wherever you live and work. I would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our community for your support and feedback. Your stories inspire this podcast.

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