That one-to-one connection between a child and their mentor is pure gold dust. That’s what makes the Suas programme so special.

“We worked with this brilliant kid called Michael. He was eight years old and went to primary school in inner-city Dublin. He was considered a poor reader, the kind of guy who would never put his hand up in class to read. We found him a mentor who realised that Michael wasn’t really a poor reader, he just had no interest in the books in school. We asked what he liked and he said: ‘Superheroes!’ So we found him Percy Jackson & the Lightning Thief. The idea was to take it step by step: ‘Let’s just read ten pages together’. So they did. Then the mentor said, ‘Okay, I’ll come back next week and we’ll do ten more pages.’ When the mentor came back the next week the teacher said: ‘I don’t know what you’re after doing, but Michael read the whole book. 377 pages!’ Considered a poor reader and here he was reading an entire book. That one-to-one connection between a child and their mentor is pure gold dust. That’s what makes the Suas programme so special.”

John Logue – CEO at Suas delivered the winning pitch at SOUP dublin’s February event which was proudly supported by LinkedFinance. Find out more: https://blog.linkedfinance.com/soup-dublin