One Million Mentors (1MM) is a unique community-based mentoring programme, quickly growing roots around the UK. The aim is to transform young lives by connecting one million young people with one million mentors. This ambitious programme backs the talents of young people to improve their career chances while at the same time strengthening local communities. 1MM was founded on the belief that through personal, one-to-one mentoring, more young people can grow the knowledge, networks, skills and confidence they need to succeed.
At the heart of their service is a digital platform where young people, potential mentors, and mentoring coordinators such as schools can register and connect.
The existing platform had been built with limited funds, and the Co founders of One Million Mentors knew that the platform had to become easier to use, mobile friendly, and secure.
In early 2018, the Co founders met with ThoughtWorks in Manchester, England, for a discovery session where they talked about what needed to be done to improve their existing platform. As the One Million Mentors beliefs were so aligned with those of ThoughtWorks, the latter offered to support the project for an initial period of six months, which was further extended to a year.
During a kickoff workshop with all stakeholders, data security was identified as high risk, given the level of personal information that was being gathered, stored and shared. Safeguarding young people was paramount, so vulnerability testing was a core part of the team’s agile delivery cycle as they developed the new platform. An expert security tester from ThoughtWorks India was deployed to check the system, and the team hosted several “hacknights” where other ThoughtWorkers were invited to try to “break” the system.