When I first met my mentee he struggled to read even the most important things like pizza menus.

One of his hobbies is looking around charity shops and one day we found a book which listed the historic events of each year of the last century. Together we sat on a bench and went through various years to see what occurred. I suggested that he read a bit each day, taking different years at random.

Several months later I picked him up for a trip out and he’d brought a different book and started reading to me. He said ‘Hey, what do you think of my reading?’. I said ‘it’s fantastic, what have you been doing?’, he replied ‘reading that book like you suggested.’

It brings tears to your eyes but the moral is ‘get then into something they are really interested in’. The mentee did all the hard work not me. I was just the facilitator.