Jeyaraj adds: "When colleagues do it together as part of a team, it can encourage more people to get involved.
"It broke the ice and made a way for colleagues and myself to talk with and approach people who were homeless.
"It helps broaden our thinking, too, taking us out of our bubble. It's good to see what different communities live close to you and helps you understand what is the purpose of life – to make some positive change."
4) Mutual benefit
Diana Hyde is a global HR director in the US, formerly a wealth manager and banker, and has spent the past 20 years volunteering for a US-based charity called Minds Matter in her spare time.
Minds Matter runs educational mentoring programme for lower-income children to help them get into college. She has mentored three students and is still in touch with all of them, and sees them regularly.
She was also interim executive director for the New York chapter before going to graduate school herself, which gave her plenty of opportunity to meet other students.
Hyde describes the many barriers that exist that discourage and make it harder for first-generation students to go through the processes like application and funding and networking that will allow them to get into a good college.
So Minds Matter provides additional resources. She believes mentoring is good for mutual wellbeing because it draws on and teaches the good in having a level social capital, which is necessary to navigate this world.
She says: "It makes life a lot easier to have the help of someone who has been through the process before and who can give guidance on how to approach something new."
And there is mutual benefit to mentoring. For Hyde, wellbeing has come from the relationship with her mentees and from the mutuality and reciprocity in that.
She explains: “The organisation changed my life such a meaningful way and helped me align what gave me energy and purpose with my impact on the world.
"When you show up for someone and you can hold space for them and listen to them it really positively impacts on you are feeling about yourself and especially as it changes and there is a reciprocity in that relationship it is even more meaningful.”
“Yes, I am providing something to someone else, but more often than not they are providing something to me. A new way of looking at something, or helping someone problem solve something that helps me look at something in a different manner.
