The TANDEM NOW project is fast becoming one of the most exciting and valuable services Exchange House will have the pleasure to be involved with.

Young members of the Traveller community will be given the opportunity to gain real life experience, advice, information, and support as part of a blended mentoring programme. The reason behind the programme is to provide the young people with an opportunity many of them would not usually have. They can learn first hand from someone in their own community about professional career paths and build positive and valuable relationships with them. Many people from the settled community, as educational attainment is statistically higher, often have someone in their family or close network they can get this support from.

Exchange House seeks to provide young Travellers with this opportunity to support them to progress in their education and their career.  They will meet with professionals from their chosen career path and meet up with them both in person and online through tools such as Skype and Gmail to learn more about professions such as education, youth work, social work, and many more.

Exchange House will work with both the mentors and mentees and provide support to both throughout the mentoring programme. They will provide the mentors with training to ensure they have the skills necessary to provide young people with a structured and informative mentoring programme. Exchange House will also meet with the mentees and provide training in the area of online tools for specifically using both the Gmail and Skype software programmes. Exchange House as part of their work package for the programme will be evaluating the feedback from the mentors and the mentees throughout the programme and constantly seeking to improve it to suit all participants’ needs. This service will be available to those interested and committed to the programme and will link in with both the Education and Youth Work services in the organisation.