One of my best friends in elementary school was a son of Turkish immigrants.
His parents didn’t speak any German, so naturally he had serious issues with the language, too.
This held him back in school, which lead to him getting sent to the lowest tier of secondary school.
(We have 3 tiers in Germany. The highest one (Gymnasium) qualifies you for university, the middle one (Realschule) used to qualify you for highly-skilled work that doesn’t require university, and the lowest one (Hauptschule) for the trades. Nowadays, even trades jobs scoff at the middle tier, and the lowest tier is basically a direct route to a life of shit jobs or unemployment.)
But just by hanging out with him as a friend, I taught him German, how to use and fix computers, showed him the world of books, and connected him to German society better. I’m not trying to brag, he was a very bright kid and it wasn’t like I was doing this as welfare, he was just a good friend and we shared what we liked with each other.

25 years later we met again by accident. He actually recognized me when he saw me on the street in a different city.
By then he had switched from Hauptschule to Realschule, went on to get his qualification for university, studied economics, created his own company in the IT sector, and had 6 employees. And he told me that my friendship was what kept him out of the wrong circles. On the old computer I had given him (which my parents had replaced) he had taught himself how to use office programs, so he was the only one in the family who could do the taxes, which taught him about finances.
At the time I met him again I was actually unemployed and working odd manual labor jobs under the table, after failing my university education twice due to depression.
He connected me to some contacts he had, which landed me an IT support job, and now I have a pretty good career as a sysadmin.

I mentoured some jr devs and some apprentices. You end up learning quite a bit about yourself, your industry, and your straighths and weaknesses pretty quickly doing so. Telling someone, “well that just what worked” is not good enough.

Convinced a long distance friend to change their major from Acupuncture to Computer Science before they ruined their life.

They’re doing better than I am, now.

I’ve done this a few times through my life, especially lately as I’ve finally been getting my own life stabilized. Here’s some more “notable” examples.

A family member, where I’ve been trying to mentor them and help them in every way I possibly can - sometimes at great personal cost - but as the saying goes, I’ve led them to water but I can’t make them drink. Still won’t give up, though.

Another family member I’ve done the same for has actually been trying to take me up on it. Still early stages, but they’ve started on applying for college in a field they’re interested in. I’m helping them study since it happens to be adjacent to my own field, and I’ll help cover the bulk of the cost if they don’t qualify for gov’t funding. I’m really hoping things work out for them.

The only time I’ve really actually seen obvious results is in my students where I volunteer teaching English. One student in particular really struggled to read even a single word, but in less than a year, they can now read most sentences on their own - which is honestly just insane to me.
Obviously it’s like 99.999% their effort rather than mine, but I like to think I’m helping lol.

…writing this all out makes me feel like I’m bragging or something. Really I’ve just been in a rough spot for most of my life, and now that I’m getting my life together I’m just trying to give back a bit where I can. I just want everyone to be happy, lol.

A few times I’ve been there for friends and helped them through rough times just by being someone to talk to.

But I also helped my best friend and roommate by paying most of the bills while he developed his IT/engineering skills. He’s got a good career now but struggled for a few years.

Then I took someone in a couple months ago and she’s staying in my attic now. That’s going well, my wife and I get along great with her. Hopefully it’ll all turn out well.

Not sure how deeply positive it was necessarily, but as far as I can tell I changed at least one person’s life significantly.

When I was in middle school I learned how to solve the Rubik’s cube through online tutorials, and afterwards I was basically addicted to it for a while and I was messing with a cube all the time. One of my classmates was interested in learning how to solve one, so I drew a bunch of guides and taught him the terminology, and soon enough he was also hooked on the Rubik’s cube.

I eventually grew tired of it, but he kept going and learned how to solve all sorts of smaller and bigger cubes and pyramids. I bumped into him at uni a few years later and he had a cube in his hand lol. Last I heard of him he was even participating in some local competitions, but idk what he’s up to now.

Even if he ultimately gave up on his speedcubing dreams I can at least say that I introduced him to a cool new hobby that kept him entertained for several years.

Yes, and then he ghosted me…

I don’t think one could consider me as ever having been a mentor in the sense one is looking for, but someone I remained friendly with despite her being an outcast among everyone else made me happy when she implied I gave her hope that someone could be proud of her, her finishing by saying “and that resonates more than even some questionable romantic companion might”. She says she thinks of me whenever dealing with anything, “like an internal Jesus”.

Yep.

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