Goal 17’s new Independent Visitor training is underway!

This week marked a significant milestone for Goal 17: we delivered our first training session for our brand new Independent Visitor programmes we’re running in partnership with the Royal Borough of Greenwich. Similar but different to our existing mentor training, these new “IVs” will be befriending young people in care, providing support and consistency in a time when it is most needed. 

What is an Independent Visitor?

An Independent Visitor is a bit more hands-on than one of our traditional mentors, committing around 2-4 hours a month to their young person for a minimum of two years. This includes one in-person meeting a month, for which we provide a budget. IVs and their young person are encouraged to have fun, enriching and relaxed days out together. 

Since Goal 17 took over the programme in April 2025 we’ve been onboarding existing volunteers from the previous provider, but there’s a significant backlog of young people awaiting an allocated volunteer – some waiting for over 12 months. 

Cutting down the backlog with new volunteers

We’ve made it our mission to cut this backlog down and thanks to our fantastic team, in particular Holly Carr who is running this programme, we’ve recruited over 20 new volunteers who will now be undertaking this training. Once that’s done, the new IV goes through our vetting process before being carefully matched with the right young person. 

We’re thrilled to be getting this training underway, using everything we know about training brilliant mentors and tweaking it to the needs of a slightly different programme. However, as mentioned, we still have a backlog of young people and therefore are always in need of more volunteers. If you or anyone you know is interested, we urge you to check out goal17.global/greenwich for more information. Sharing the link with friends, family and colleagues is also incredibly helpful! 

The difference it makes

It’s hard to overstate how important programmes like this are to young people in care. “It’s really nice for us because we have someone to lean on. When we’re down, there’s someone that can help us get on the right track and push us to follow our dreams” says Toby, a young person in a similar programme. 

“We are always so inspired by every volunteer that steps forward for our programmes” says Francesca Salussolia, Goal 17 CEO and Founder. “Meeting a new cohort of IVs is truly enriching knowing how much difference they will make in a young person’s life.” 

For those volunteers across the country still waiting to be matched or placed on a programme, we thank you for your continued patience and support. New opportunities are in the works and we can’t wait to share them with you.