The London Stock Exchange has witnessed some remarkable moments in its 300-year history. Last month, it hosted something a little different: a conversation about care leavers, Cape Town, artificial intelligence, and what it means to show up for someone, consistently, for nine months.
On a spring evening in the City of London, SAYes Mentoring brought together funders, partners, mentors, mentees and supporters for a fireside chat and Market Close ceremony at the London Stock Exchange Group. Although the close of the market marks the end of a day, the event was just the beginning. It traced the full arc of the organisation, from its origins on the streets of Cape Town to its ambitions for the next eighteen years.
After the confetti cleared, co-founders Gillian Anderson and Michelle Potter were joined on stage by media industry veteran Dawn Airey CBE, whose sharp, searching questions gave the conversation both structure and momentum. The room was full. The conversation, as it turned out, was fuller still.
How It Started
Michelle Potter has told the story before, but it bears repeating. In 2005, she went to Cape Town for what was supposed to be a few weeks of football coaching with street-connected boys. She stayed, in one form or another, for eighteen years.
The pivotal moment came when Michelle was asked to plan trip to London for a group of those boys. She and Gillian Anderson raised funds and planned an amazing adventure for the boys. Before they left, they were invited to meet Nelson Mandela. “He leaned forward,” Michelle recalled, “and said clearly: you can be no leader without education. You must go to school.” When the boys returned to Cape Town, the trip over, they began drifting back to the streets. A two-week visit, however meaningful, wasn’t enough.
That realisation, that young people need consistent, sustained, structured support, not one-off interventions, became the founding principle of SAYes. After writing her dissertation on the differences between support for care leavers in the UK versus South Africa, Michelle set to work with Gillian’s help, to create an organisation that has since supported more than 1,000 young people across the UK and South Africa.
What the Programme Actually Does
One of the evening’s recurring themes was the distinction between informal mentoring and what SAYes calls structured formal mentorship.
“Our mentors don’t give advice,” Michelle explained. “Because your advice might be wrong.” Instead, SAYes mentors go through 24 hours of training before a single session begins. The sessions focus on active listening, Socratic questioning, perspective sharing and structured advocacy. A research psychologist sits at the heart of the programme’s design. Transition specialists support every match. And every mentor and mentee commits to one hour a week, for nine months.
“It’s not befriending,” Michelle said. “There is a science to what we do. And we know that what we do is working.”
Mentor Karin Turner, who has guided four young women through the programme across South Africa and the UK, put it plainly: “You just never know what you’re going to get. And the training from SAYes prepares you for all of it.”
The Voices That Stopped the Room
If the founders provided the context, it was the mentees who provided the heart.
Marriam, who grew up in the care system and navigated a childhood of significant isolation, spoke with quiet directness about what consistency had meant to her. “I saw a lot of people I knew end up in very dark places – because they didn’t have that consistent support,” she said. “Having someone I could choose, who I could direct, how it goes – that consistency is not something I got a lot growing up.”
She is now training to become a mentor herself.
Unis’s story traced a different kind of disruption. At seventeen, a serious heart diagnosis dissolved every plan he had made. He joined SAYes at eighteen – and at twenty-one, she is presenting research on the power of mentorship to an international conference in Madrid, in partnership with the Greater London Authority.
“SAYes helped me build a toolkit where I can now take control of my own life,” he said. “Despite everything – I’m still here. And I’m proud of that.”
Looking Ahead
The final voice of the evening belonged, in some ways, to the future. AI specialist Emad Mostaque spoke about the role technology might play in scaling structured mentorship, and about something larger.
“What does the mentorship of society look like,” he asked, “in a stage when we might not be the smartest people anymore — the silicon might be? But we can certainly be the most caring and the most vital to a positive future.”
It was a line that landed. And it crystallised something that had been building all evening: that the work SAYes does is not a nice-to-have. It is, in a world changing faster than most of us can track, one of the most important things a person can do with an hour of their week.
SAYes currently supports 130 young people across the UK and South Africa. Hundreds more are waiting for a match. The programme is ready to scale. The question, as always, is funding.
If last month’s evening at the Stock Exchange proved anything, it is that the people who understand what is at stake are finding each other. The next step is making sure there are enough funded places for every young person who needs one.
To find out more about SAYes Mentoring or to become a mentor, please contact Colleen Pinto
To explore partnership and funding opportunities please contact Michelle Potter
