Mentor a promising teenager with Leaf

Support a smart, curious, and ambitiously altruistic 16-18 year old to explore how they can best save lives, help others, or change the course of history.

Key details:

  • Time requirements are flexible. Suggested 8 calls spread over 1.5 years from September 2023. Likely 1-3 hours of onboarding, training, and comms with Leaf

  • Remote, but only open to people normally resident in the UK for insurance-related reasons (and with the right to work in the UK if you need a stipend)

  • Unpaid by default but stipends are available

Express interest here (reviewed on a rolling basis)

(Scroll down for more info)

Leaf is an independent nonprofit that supports exceptional teenagers. Our main service is the Changemakers Fellowship, a one-week summer residential programme with follow-up mentorship support.

The Fellows are a very promising bunch. For example, 49% of those offered places so far have achieved all grade 9s at GCSE, compared to 0.6% of the UK.

They are also diverse: 54% selected an ethnicity other than white, which compares to 14% of the UK and 24% of the effective altruism community, and 61% are female or non-binary, which compares to 29% of EA.

We select participants for intelligence, curiosity, and altruistic intent. Most are not familiar with effective altruism or longtermism before the programme, but will get a chance to dive deep during the week-long residential, before the mentorship calls begin.

How you will make a difference

Many teenagers have a desire to make a positive impact on the world but lack the resources and support to do so. Traditional education systems do not prioritise altruistic pursuits, leaving these teenagers without guidance or mentorship. The Changemakers Fellowship offers a unique opportunity for 16-18 year olds in the UK to explore how they can best make a difference. During the residential, they will have had a chance to identify topics or project ideas that they want to dive into deeper. But we need your help to provide them with follow-up guidance, support, and accountability as they take their next steps.

We list some example Fellows (i.e. mentees) at the bottom of this document.

Calls may have a variety of purposes. Both your goals and the Fellows’ will be considered in the matching process, but may also evolve over time.

For example, you might discuss:

  • Altruistic projects they are pursuing

  • Altruistic topics they are exploring, e.g. particular cause areas, career paths

  • Specific opportunities they are considering, e.g. work experience, internships, grants

  • Potential new connections they could make

  • Specific documents or drafts they have created, e.g. a project plan, a grant application, a product prototype

  • Uni decision-making and applications (likely limited to the first ~2 calls)


Our suggestion is for ~8 calls that start monthly and decrease in frequency, e.g.:

You and the mentee will arrange timings between yourselves and may deviate from this suggested outline as you see fit, including arranging further calls if you would like to. You’d also be welcome to cancel meetings if your mentee doesn’t seem to be making the most of the opportunity and won’t be obligated to maintain the relationship if it isn’t working well.

Additionally, mentorship is a key component of management, which seems like a bottleneck in a lot of impact-focused (research) organisations at the moment. Developing this skillset seems valuable. We’ll provide you with resources and support to develop these skills.

What would make a great mentor

  • Normally resident in the UK, e.g. a UK citizen or living here indefinitely. (You need the right to work in the UK too if you’re hoping for a stipend.) Unfortunately, this is a hard requirement for this year, for insurance-related reasons.

  • Expertise in (or strong potential for) high-impact career paths and cause areas.

  • A scout mindset — the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were.

  • Supportive, caring, and excited to support young people to explore how they can have positive impact.

  • Ability to communicate clearly and engagingly (in English) with young people.


We’ll support you to provide mentorship; don’t worry if you don’t feel qualified for it! Please err on the side of expressing interest if you’re unsure.

Practicalities

  • By default this is an unpaid role. But we’re very happy to provide a stipend if needed, e.g. you need the money to justify the time spent on this or just if you think it will meaningfully increase your motivation.

  • If you’re interested, we’d also love for our mentors to come and hang out at the summer residential in Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, UK, 19-27th August, 2023.

    • We’ll pay for your food, travel, and accommodation, and you'll have low/no responsibilities.

    • You'll get to meet Fellows and staff, join evening social activities, etc.

    • Options for you to run sessions, join others' sessions, find volunteers/interns, etc.

    • We expect this to substantially improve Fellows' experience.

    • It's also just really fun and rewarding.

    • Great if you can make it for the full week, but fine if not.

    • (More info here, if helpful; this would be like the "counsellor" role but perhaps even lower responsibility.)

  • We expect that the expression of interest form (> 10 mins) will be the only stage of the process except that we may organise a short call (> 30 mins) if you’re coming to the residential.

  • If conditionally accepted as a mentor, you’ll need to get a DBS check, provide a reference, and provide proof of residence in the UK. We’ll walk you through those bits though.

  • Other onboarding and communication with Leaf will include e.g. reading through resources to support your mentorship calls and providing feedback about how the calls are going.

Example mentees

  • Avleen

    Avleen is hoping to launch a communications project to improve AI alignment. She is president of a local human rights committee, organiser of an inter-school Model United Nations conference, and editor for the Young Voice Magazine. She has participated in a reading group of The Precipice, Leaf’s online programme “How to save 10 lives by age 20”, and read a range of other relevant books. She’s likely to apply for economics at uni.

  • Jenny

    Jenny enjoys cybersecurity competitions and beta testing software; she’s interested in applying her abilities here to pressing problems. She got the top possible grades on all of her GCSEs, scored higher than more than 99% of people on a short general mental ability test as part of the Leaf application process, and has an offer to study mathematics at Cambridge University.

  • Matthew

    Matthew is developing a productivity app with some school friends, aiming to make a profit which can then be donated to charity. Like Jenny, he got the top possible grades at GCSE and 99th percentile on the GMA test. He followed up on a number of resources mentioned on Leaf’s website, skim reading Human Compatible, Superintelligence, and others during the application process. He is planning to apply for engineering at uni.