You’ve probably heard of Dame Kelly Holmes. She’s kind of a big deal in the history of UK athletics. Dame Kelly is one of the UK’s most successful Olympians. Who can forget her incredible double Gold winning performance at Athens in 2004? One Gold is some achievement, but winning both the 800 metres and 1,500 metres is remarkable. She raised the bar for UK athletics and is someone I’ve admired for a long time.

I admire her even more now, but for an entirely different reason. That reason?– The Dame Kelly Holmes Trust. It’s an incredible organisation that has such a powerful mission.

Three levels of beneficiary‍

The Dame Kelly Holmes Trust (DKHT) stands out as it supports three levels of beneficiary. It supports former elite athletes and trains them to become mentors.
The athlete mentors then go onto support young people, between the age of 14-25 who need support in some aspect of their life. And finally, these young people are given the tools, skills and most importantly, the confidence, to got back to and support their community in some way.

The pilot

We’re excited that the combined efforts of the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust and Know You More has resulted in a pilot project to support 50 young people across the UK. Whether it’s a young person in rural Cumbria, the Highlands of Scotland, the Valleys of Wales or indeed any part of theUnited Kingdom they will have the opportunity to be coached and supported.

It’s a hugely exciting project and we’ll share the next chapter of the story once the pilot is complete. I’ll leave the last word to Ben Hilton, Director of Programmes at DKHT.

The Know You More difference

“We like the ethos of what Know You More do. There’s a clear synergy between their commitment to young people and our own. Based on their work with other young people we could see how coaching worked in practice. The coaching from Know You More will underpin much of what our athlete mentors do. It’s this blended approach of coaching and mentoring that’s so exciting.

But it was their unique approach, their commitment and of course, the fact and they have a network of high quality, professional coaches that ultimately gave us the confidence to work with them.

Ultimately though, it’s not about Know You More or The Dame KellyHolmes Trust. It’s about the young people we help. And, it’s about continually asking the question “How can we help them to achieve more?”It’s not about painting a community centre, it’s about helping them play leading roles in their communities. It’s about empowering young people to change their lives and the lives of those around them.”

It’s a model we really like at Know You More as it's built on creating a big, and importantly, lasting impact. Ben told me that the key beneficiary for them is the young people. It’s those young people, from different backgrounds, with challenging personal histories that experience the most dramatic of changes. And, it’s those young people that will go on to support others and have an impact in their own community.

But the model relies on a team of trained and passionate athlete mentors.

The young people

The influence and support that these Athlete Mentors go on to achieve is inspiring. DKHT shares the stories of ten young people they’ve supported on their website.

Their stories bring to life the entire model. Each video tells a different story, but they’re united by a common theme –young people having the confidence to lead a life they never thought they could. And confidence is very much the keyword here.

That’s very much the goal of DKHT, to give young people the confidence to improve, not just their own lives, but the lives of others.

The drive to make a bigger and broader difference

Despite the big name of Dame Kelly Holmes, they are still, a relatively small charity. But, their ambition can’t be underestimated. Part of their strategic direction is to support young people in every area of the UK. Ben recognised that they can’t deliver their flagship programme in remote areas of the UK.

I was introduced to Ben through one of our coaches. That lead to an initial call where we discussed a potential solution to their goal of delivering Get OnTrack to anyone, anywhere. That solution was to take a blended approach to coaching and mentoring. An approach that combined the convenience of technology with the power of face-to-face communication. Essentially a video coaching solution that removed the geographical barriers.

For Ben, and the rest of the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust team, this also had the benefit of being an extremely cost effective model.

That initial call was quickly followed by a demonstration of our Know You More platform. It’s the technical solution we’ve developed to a real human problem – matching the right coach to the right coachee.

From concept to clarity

Here’s what Ben had to say about that initial period.

“Right from the outset, Tim and the Know You More team were more focussed on the concept, and how we could make this work. It was about working together to come up with a solution to our unique problem. This felt, from the outset, like a real partnership. It was never about volume or revenue or the scale of the project – it was all about the ideas and nailing the approach.

We also like how they measured the impact on young people, which is so important to us. Having a robust process, supported through a technical solution will help us validate what we do.

We also really appreciated that Tim and members of the KnowYou More team made the effort to join us on three of our visits to schools. This not only helped them learn our approach, it also strengthened our partnership because this was done at their own expense and before there was even a sniff of a contract.”

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Original case study published in March 2018