Mentor to 400-plus Canberra school students wanted to be 'mature role model in their life'

Mal Ferguson officially retired from the public service in 2002. He’s now aged 83, and according to him, “should probably slow down a bit”.

“I like helping people across the board, but also I got a free university education, so I reckon I owe a bit back,” he says.

All this time, Mal has mentored students across the ACT’s public primary and secondary schools as a volunteer through the ACT School Volunteer Program, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this month.

These volunteers typically meet weekly with their mentees, engaging with them through one-on-one activities to support literacy and numeracy or by collaborating with them on craft, cooking, Meccano or Lego projects.

“The volunteers share insights gained through their own lives and boost confidence and attitudes to learning through conversation and connection,” ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry explains.

The program was launched at the North Ainslie Primary School in 2005 by then Governor-General Michael Jeffery, but technically, Mal started long before that date.

Mal is a member of the Weston Creek Rotary Club. He credits another of the club’s members with bringing the program over from Western Australia in 1997 and initially introducing it to schools on the ACT’s south side.

“It was basically trying to assist kids in schools who, for various reasons, were not performing to their capability,” Mal says.

“In my experience, probably the common factor is a really dysfunctional home where the kid is basically struggling to handle a home environment aside from trying to learn something in school.”

Mentors apply to join the program and nominate their nearby schools in the process. They then receive training at the Hedley Beare Centre for Teaching and Learning in Stirling before teachers are able to nominate them for their students.

“The teachers, where possible, make a match between the student and what the mentor has to offer and pretty soon after that, the volunteer gets started – one day a week, one hour per student, during school hours.”

The program started with 15 mentors. Last year, more than 135 mentors volunteered across 40 schools.

In that time, Mal has inspired his fair share of mentors to join, and from all sorts of backgrounds.

“We had a professional psychiatrist at one stage, as well as the odd medical practitioner, engineer, I’m a former bureaucrat/diplomat … It’s really about life experiences they can pass on to the kids.”

The job comes with plenty of highs … and the occasional low.

“I had a guy turn up on day and say, ‘Oh, mum died yesterday’, and apparently he was an only child and they were living with his grandma, and apparently he hadn’t been told his mum had terminal cancer,” Mal says.

“I’ve also had a couple I knew pretty well from primary school, and when they got to high school, I recognised their depression and asked them, ‘Are you thinking of killing yourself?’ And they both said ‘yes’.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m not really competent to help you with this, but would you mind if I put you in touch with a counsellor? Fortunately, they both agreed.”

In the interests of building trust, Mal says it’s important to keep as much as possible between the mentor and the mentee, but there are times – like these – when mandatory reporting laws come into play.

The best part is when one of his former mentees flags him down in the street years later.

“They’ll recognise me and give me a hug and say, ‘thanks’,” he says.

“I probably could have been out in the private industry during this time, working as a consultant and making a bit of money, but that’s not really what motivates me.

“I like to help people, particularly young people, make better lives than they would otherwise have because a lot of them don’t have mature role models in their lives.”

Now over 80 years old, Mal is planning for 2026 to be his last, when he will have been in the program for 25 years.

“I’m only doing three full days this year … so it will be more of a tapering off.”

Wendy Cave, principal of the Ainslie Primary School – where it all began – is also a member of the volunteer program’s committee, and says “the wisdom these people bring and the time that they bring for one to one conversations with children are so important”.

“They bring the perspective that comes with life experience to know that while some problems may feel really big for students, it’s OK, they will get through them.”

Forrest Primary principal Chris Jones says the teachers “see the difference it makes to an individual child every time”.

“The joy, the excitement at knowing that they’re about to have their session with the volunteer, the difference it makes to them during that time, how they feel about themselves and the benefits that accrue from that afterwards … anything involving the socialisation of children, giving them that attention, anything like that pays dividends,” he says.

The ACT School Volunteer Program is always looking for more mentors. Visit the website for more information or to apply.