Richard Aston

Big Buddy Mentoring Trust

With a background in corporate business consulting, IT, community and service work, Richard Aston is well placed to expand the services of Auckland organisation The Big Buddy Mentoring Trust.

Richard says the Big Buddy mentoring programme is based on a simple philosophy - that boys need good, reliable male role models in their lives to become good men. The Trust has huge praise for mothers raising sons alone but receives phone calls from women everyday who feel their sons need a ‘Big Buddy’.

“Mentoring fatherless boys is a profoundly simple concept but one that has huge implications in healing the social fabric of our communities. My dream is that eventually every fatherless boy in New Zealand who needs a positive male role model will actually have one and in the process we build a better world.”

Richard says the Trust currently employs two coordinator/youth workers who deal directly with the Big Buddies, the boys and their families. They also have a contracted clinical manager who develops and maintains the stringent mentor screening and assessment process. The remaining members of the team are part-time or voluntary accountancy and fundraising staff.

During Richard’s World of Difference year his aim is to expand the organisation to offer services around the North Island and eventually New Zealand.

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