About Mentorea

Eligibility

Who Mentorea prioritises.

Financial background

Lower-income households

Priority goes to students from lower-income backgrounds. This can include students eligible for free school meals, students in receipt of pupil premium funding, or households where cost is a genuine barrier to accessing careers guidance, tutoring, or professional networks elsewhere. You don't need formal proof to apply. Just be honest about your circumstances in your application.

Genuine desire

A real interest in growing

We look for students who can show genuine curiosity about their future, whether that's a specific career, a subject they want to improve in, or simply a desire to be more confident and ambitious. Applications that show real thought and effort are prioritised over generic or rushed ones.

Ability to commit

Consistency matters

Mentoring runs for six weeks of 30-minute sessions, and tutoring works best with regular, ongoing sessions. We prioritise students who can realistically commit to that schedule, because mentors and tutors are giving their time voluntarily, and a missed or cancelled session affects a real person on the other end, not just a spot in a system.

Why commitment matters

Respecting everyone's time

Every mentor and tutor is a volunteer, and matching takes real time and effort on our end too. When a student commits to the full programme, that consistency is what actually builds the confidence, trust, and results we see reflected in our testimonials. Prioritising committed students means the programme stays effective and sustainable for everyone involved, including the next student on our waiting list.

None of this is about excluding anyone unfairly. It's about making sure a limited number of mentor and tutor spaces go to the students who will benefit from and make use of them the most, so the programme keeps its impact as it grows.

Miles Alexander, Founder

Meet the founder

Why I started Mentorea.

My name is Miles Alexander, and I'm the founder of Mentorea. I was brought up in a single-parent household in Hackney, from a low-income background. Growing up, I saw first-hand how much a lack of guidance, networks, and role models can shape a young person's opportunities.

Being raised by a single parent taught me a huge amount about resilience, independence, and making the most of what you have. My mum worked hard to give me every opportunity she could, but there were still entire worlds of careers, industries, and pathways that I simply didn't know existed, not because I wasn't capable, but because nobody around me had been through them either. I didn't have someone who worked in law, or medicine, or finance, who I could ask "what's it actually like?" or "how do I even get there?"

That gap, between ambition and access, is something I felt constantly throughout school. I'd hear about opportunities other students had simply because of who their parents knew, or which school they went to, and it never felt like it was about ability. It was about access. And access shouldn't be something you're born into or miss out on by chance.

"I always wished I had someone."Miles Alexander, Founder

That single feeling is the entire reason Mentorea exists. Not a business plan, not a school project, just a genuine wish that no student after me would have to figure it out entirely on their own. I wanted to build something that didn't just exist on paper, but actually connected students with real people, doing real jobs, who remembered exactly what it felt like to not know where to start.

I started small, reaching out to professionals I admired, asking if they'd be willing to give half an hour of their time to a student who reminded them of themselves at that age. The response surprised me. So many people wanted to give back, they just hadn't had an easy way to do it. That's what Mentorea became: the bridge between students who need guidance and professionals who genuinely want to offer it.

Alongside mentoring, I also run a Discord education community that's grown to over 1,000 students over the past three years, which is where the idea for Mentorea's tutoring programme came from too. I've always loved learning, and I get a genuine amount of satisfaction from watching someone go from dreading a subject to actually being confident in it.

Every part of Mentorea is built around one idea: that where you start shouldn't determine how far you can go.

Guidance and opportunity, for every student.

20+ mentors in each professional field.