YOUNG PROFESSIONALS TO HELP CHILDREN WITH POOR SELF IMAGE.

Thanks to a group of young professionals, a new mentoring and befriender scheme to help disadvantaged children will be officially launched by Assoc Prof Ho Peng Kee, Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs on 20 June 1998 .

Formed under the umbrella BP Mentoring Programme, the True Hearts Connection Mentoring and Befriender scheme is Singapore's first such scheme which is totally initiated and completely run by volunteers who are young professionals and executives.

Funding and training support comes from BP which pioneered the Mentoring concept with the help of tertiary students three years ago. To-date the umbrella BP Mentoring programme has seen 2,500 tertiary student volunteers helping 5,000 children in 90 schools and 8 community clubs.

The latest scheme aims to help economically and socially disadvantaged children raise their self-esteem, confidence and academic achievements through mentoring, recreation and tutoring activities. True Hearts Connection (THC) already runs two successful student mentoring schemes, with BP's help a year ago. They involved student mentors from Victoria and Tampines Junior Colleges helping mentees from Temasek and Springfield Secondary Schools respectively.

At this launch, the first batch of 22 mentors will also receive certificates of commendation from Prof Ho.

The media is invited to cover the event and interview the mentors and mentees who will share their experiences during the launch.

For further enquiries, please contact:
Nancy Siow, Tel: 371 8799
Daniel Chew, Tel: 322 9348

The BP Mentoring programme is part of BP's global school links and youth development programme. The scheme gives college and university-level students broad opportunities to develop their leadership, management and communication skills by volunteering their personal time and energies in mentoring younger students in their neighbourhood communities.

Since its launch in 1995, the programme has helped to match made about 1000 volunteer mentors from the nation's two universities and four polytechnics, with about 2500 mentees from 85 schools and six community-based clubs. In addition to providing funds to kick-start mentoring schemes, BP also organises training and planning retreats for mentors with help from world-class experts on mediated learning techniques, tutoring skills and related educational developments, trends and strategies.