“I was so intimidated and scared that we wouldn’t click." (Jay, volunteer tutor)

Image taken by Impart.

“I was so intimidated and scared that we wouldn’t click,” Jay recalls of his first impression of his tattoo-covered tutee from Impart. “But I was totally wrong!”

To his surprise, they got along really well and completely subverted Jay’s expectations. He was funny, and began sharing light-hearted stories about how he got these “scary” tattoos everyone is so afraid of.

Looking back, Jay now regards this as one of his biggest takeaways. “I realised I was also coming in with my own expectations and preconceived notions of what kind of person he was. It took several meetings before my own judgements and prejudices of him were worn down. It showed me that there were as many things that I could learn from him, just as he was learning from me”.

Seeing how the one-to-one tutoring system changed his own worldview, he became drawn to continue making a longterm impact in the lives of others. And after one year of tutoring, he decided to take on more responsibility by joining the core team.

Jay is now working on using Impart’s mentorship system to make art more accessible for underserved youths - an initiative he coins as “Passion Projects”. Inspired by his own music background, he hopes this new subset will take off and continue enacting sustainable impact.