Mintridge Virtual Silver Mentoring Programme with Dan Powell
On Tuesday 13th October, we were delighted to join Windmill Primary School in Raunds, for a fantastic Virtual Silver Programme that was kindly donated by Bowbridge Homes, a local house builder. Bowbridge Homes develop high specification properties, in and around Northamptonshire and have donated this programme because of the partnership that they have developed with The Mintridge Foundation.
Bowbridge Homes partner with the Mintridge Foundation because community is incredibly important to them and they want to create and develop the communities that they currently work with. For this reason, they fund at least one programme with the Mintridge Foundation at a school close to each of their developments, throughout the academic year. Having seen first-hand the positive impact that each of our visits creates, Bowbridge Homes hope to put something back into the community and inspire a future generation to chase after their goals.
Originally this Programme was due to be delivered in the school, as a visit, and we would have loved to be visiting the students at Windmill Primary School with our Paralympian Dan Powell! With the current climate as it is, The Mintridge Foundation have worked with Bowbridge Homes to support the students at Windmill Primary School virtually, so they can still benefit from Dan’s incredible story and experience his presentation and words of advice.
Dan spent the day talking to the students about a wide range of topics and what sport has taught him along his journey in athletics and judo. Dan is a visually impaired athlete, which to most is a hidden disability, which this has never stopped Dan in his personal or professional sporting life. The children at Windmill Primary School learnt a lot about Dan and how he lives his life, with the help of his guide dog Elmo. It was amazing for the students to learn about Dan’s disability, which has never got in the way of him achieving his goals. Dan believes, “Disability doesn’t mean inability!”
Throughout his Sporting journey and in preparation for the Paralympics next year (which Dan hopes can go ahead), Dan has experienced a lot of setbacks and has overcome an incredible amount of challenges, which the students were able to relate to and Dan’s story is something that closely related to the schools values and focus, as they spend a lot of time working on resilience and the need to be resilient when faced with a challenge. Dan spoke about how he dealt with the setbacks and how he climbs back up after setbacks, calling them “more of a speed bump than a failure”, which showed the students how failure doesn’t have to be a negative experience.
From this, Dan then spoke about the need to be persistent and determined and how you should never give up. Dan told the children that, “failure is another word for learning”, and that “if you fail, it can make you a stronger person”. The children were very engaged when Dan spoke about overcoming failure and he said he wanted them to remember, “do not let failure beat you, you need to beat the failure”, which the teachers especially loved to hear and repeated to their classes.
Dan also highlighted the fact that to voercome failure and feelings of disappointment in life, you need to have a strong support network around you. Dan mentioned his family and his judo coaches and how they pushed him to be the best he could be, and how they supported him when he was experiencing setbacks as well as supporting him when he was climbing his way back up the ladder of success. Dan explained the importance of having a strong support network around you, in everything you do and related this to the children in terms of future school choices, exams or sporting challenges. Dan mentioned that whatever the students chose to do in life, they need to “enjoy doing something that you want to do”.
As the presentation continued, Dan highlighted the importance of health and fitness and staying active throughout your life. As Dan is also a personal trainer, he knows how vital being active can be on your physical and mental wellbeing. Dan mentioned that “hard work always beats talent” which taught the children that if you put your mind to something and work really hard for it, deal with setbacks and overcome the fear of failure, success will follow. In relation to success, when Dan mentioned about being 5th in the world, one student said “well done for being close to 5th in the world, that is amazing, I do not think I could do that!” to which Dan replied, “why not? You haven’t tried yet!”.
After each presentation, there was time for the students to ask some questions to Dan. Some of the best questions were;
“How did lockdown effect your training?”
“Which Judo competitor would you like to beat the most?”
“How do you feel when you fight?”
“How did you get onto ninja warrior?”
“Who is your inspiration?”
“How does it feel to have people looking up to you?”
“How does it feel being away from family and friends when you are competing?”
“Are you planning to go to anymore Paralympics in the future?”
“What has been your favourite competition to take part in so far?”
“Was it hard work to train for the Paralympics?”
“How long does it take to train for a Paralympics?”
“How many gold medals have you won?”
“How easy is it for you to see?”
“What is visual impairment?”
“How did you carry on after getting injured?”
“How did you feel when you could not train?”
“Does your visual impairment get worse as you get older??”
The last session of the day was with Dan’s two mentees, Jason and Henry, who have both been mentored by Dan over the past six months. They were of course very excited to see and speak to Dan virtually, but are desperate to meet him in person, which we hope will happen at some point in the future! As their mentoring calls are coming to an end now, Dan asked them what they had learnt from their six-month programme and what they want to achieve in the future. Jason said he has learnt a lot and wants to progress, and he also said he had learnt, “how to get to where I want to be with football”. Henry said he has learnt to “climb higher than you have before”. Dan played some interactive games with the two mentees, testing their knowledge on specific terms like resilience and challenge, which they had some great responses for. We also supplied the boys with a ‘Mintimoji’ sheet of Minty Bear emojis which they can use to explain how they feel in the future. We understand how daunting explaining how you feel can be for some children, so pointing to an emoji explaining exactly how you feel is sometime easier than saying it out loud. Dan asked the boys to point to a bear which resembled how they felt at the start of the programme, to how they feel now. Both boys pointed at a nail biting nervous looking bear, to represent the start of their Programme, and then pointed to a big smiling bear to represent how they feel now. This was amazing to see the impact six months of mentoring has had on these two boys and how much they have grown and developed thanks to Dan, a fantastic role model for them both.
We had such an amazing virtual day at Windmill Primary School, and although the visit was not a physical visit, parents from the school expressed how much their children loved the virtual visit from Dan after hearing about it from their children. Some of the feedback included the following comments on social media.
“Emily loved this, she showed us Dan’s videos and told us all about him!”
“Nathan loved this too! What a great idea.”
“Imogen was raving about this. She said Dan had inspired her.”
“Eliza loved this today, she came home and found out more about Dan on the internet. She couldn’t stop talking about it.”
“Jess loved this too! We also realised that we’d seen Dan on ninja warrior!”
This feedback is fantastic, and it shows how virtual programmes can still be inspirational and that our Mintridge Programmes and amazing Mintridge Ambassadors, are still having a big impact.
Team Mintridge would like to say a big thank you to Windmill Primary School for helping us to organise this programme, and to all the teachers for their help on the day. We would also like to say a big thank you for the support throughout the mentoring Programme. Dan has really enjoyed getting to know Henry and Jason and has equally benefited from mentoring them over this period of time, it has been great to watch them grow and develop through this Programme. We are incredible grateful to Bowbridge Homes for their continued support and for kindly donating this Programme to Windmill Primary School. The school, the students and the Mintridge Team have thoroughly enjoyed this programme and have had an extra dose of that good soul feeling.
If you would like to know more about our Mintridge Programmes, then please contact one of the team via the website, www.mintridgefoundation.org.uk or contact Katie at katie@mintridge.org.uk
Bowbridge Homes are building houses locally and close to Windmill Primary School. We are so grateful for their support on this Silver Programme and the other Programmes that they are funding with The Mintridge Foundation. Find out more about Bowbridge Homes and The Mintridge Foundation’s partnership via the link below.
https://www.mintridgefoundation.org.uk/mintridge-foundation/thankfulthursdaywithbowbridgeh
