Letter from the Chair and CEO
This year was a wild ride for Raise. The young people we mentor needed us more than ever, yet we faced school closures across 3 states and key income streams collapsed. In parallel, we commenced the significant growth of our impact in the space of one year, increasing the number of mentees matched from 1,321 in 2020 to 2,124 in 2021. It felt like we were big wave surfing. The contradiction of concern and optimism was tremendous as we tried to hang on tight and point in the right direction, while still gathering momentum. Never sure whether we would lose our balance or if the board would break out from under us, we courageously stayed the course. While we don’t know if another wave is about to crash over us, we have reached year end safely and successfully, and we are celebrating being able to provide quality mentors for so many more young people.
There were many highlights in 2021, most importantly, the impactful delivery of our mentoring programs. Mentees with low baseline scores made statistically significant improvement in all four Outcome Areas of our Theory of Change - Asking for Help, Resilience, Hope for the Future and School Belonging. Our whole mentee cohort made significant improvement in Resilience, and we improved Hope for the Future for more than 90% of our mentees. Alongside this, we have a fresh new brand, a welcoming new central support office in Sydney, and new technology functionality added to our Raise Digital Village. We experienced a blended virtual and live team conference with inspiring guest speakers, and delivered a Mentor Thank You event with a special guest live from London. We won awards, delivered pilots, and built an inspiring collaboration with 13 other NFPs in the Together for Youth Collective, as well.
Our team is remarkably impressive. We are in awe of their dedication, positivity and energy. In 2021, we were able to spark our Strategic Impact Plan into action after several years of planning, increasing the number of young people we could mentor by 61%. With 2,007 volunteers ready to mentor the 2,124 young people enrolled in our programs, we were able to offer mentoring in 155 school programs both online and in person, regardless of the challenging environment. Knowing that the mentees in our programs also faced additional obstacles because of the pandemic, we remained committed to showing up for them and helping them to build the tools they need to push through the uncertainty. Thankfully, our partners and supporters showed up for our mentees, as well. We are sincerely grateful to the individuals, family foundations, corporate partners, and government departments who donated the time, treasure and talent we needed to continue providing quality, trained and supervised mentors for young people to talk to every single week for 6 months.
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Raise Foundation | 2021 Annual Report
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