About us

The Brightside Trust exists to help disadvantaged individuals by working to raise their achievement levels and by reducing the social barriers to their success.

Our flagship programme, the Bright Journals ementoring scheme, focuses on helping underprivileged young people to overcome disadvantage and enter into the competitive fields of medicine, dentistry, veterinary sciences and the allied health professions. Our other projects cover business, sciences, engineering and other professions.

We have worked with a variety of partners - higher education institutions, secondary schools, charities, corporate and government bodies, to deliver a suite of ementoring tools and training programmes to help undergraduates and professionals to mentor pupils from under-represented backgrounds.

How we operate
A share-gift from our trustees covers the majority of our administrative and operating costs. This means that any donation to the charity goes directly to our projects.

Our approach is to develop innovative solutions for underprivileged people in core areas of need. We aim to be effective in the long-term, and so have developed a sustainable model to ensure success and impact is maintained.

The future is bright...
As well as expanding our current projects and revamping our ementoring system, Brightside are always looking for new ways to help individuals overcome social disadvantage.

Brightside has recently merged with the student finance charity UNIAID, who help prospective and existing students to navigate their way through the financial aspects of university. We hope that together we can provide a wider range of services that reflect the interests and ambitions of the people we exist to help.

Central to all our thinking is the goal of supporting non-traditional entrants to university and so improve social mobility.