Mentoring for young people in Porto is a supportive relationship with clear limits, focused on someone's path and on responsibility. It can help with organising decisions, routine, goals and next steps, but it is not therapy, clinical counselling, or a substitute for professional support. At Nós Somos, mentoring is built on trust, confidentiality, supervision and referring people on when necessary.
What mentoring is
Mentoring is a space for guided conversation. It doesn't need to solve someone's whole life. It can help a person name their goals, recognise obstacles, sort out priorities, and take small steps with more clarity.
The strength of mentoring lies in continuity and trust, not in ready-made phrases.
What mentoring is not
Mentoring is not therapy. It should not address mental health, make diagnoses, promise a cure, ask for vulnerabilities to be exposed, or replace professionals. When a situation calls for specialist support, the responsible thing is to refer someone on, not improvise.
How it can work
The mentoring strand should set clear criteria: who can mentor, how often, for how long, which topics are appropriate, what information is protected, and who supervises the process.
There should also be a clear way in: expressing interest, a simple screening step, availability, agreeing expectations, and consent.
Its link with sport and community
Mentoring doesn't exist in isolation. It can begin after a surf, skate or jiu-jitsu session, once someone already recognises faces and starts to sense there is a network around them. Sport opens the encounter; mentoring helps carry it forward when it makes sense to.
Privacy and limits
Personal conversations should never become content. Testimonials should only be published with clear consent and without exposing anything sensitive. Even so, the project can still report back in aggregate: the number of meetings, general themes, lessons learned and improvements made to the process.
Next step
Learn about the mentoring strand, its criteria and its limits. The first step isn't telling your whole story; it's working out whether this kind of support makes sense for you right now.
