National Samaritans Campaign Secures Exclusive Regional Partnership

National charity Samaritans has exclusively partnered with regional young person’s charity Student Life, in the co-production of a national self-harm awareness project.

Following Student Life’s initial involvement in an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) last year involving meetings at Westminster, the recent relaxation of lockdown measures has seen the co-produced project re-started in earnest.

Student Life is in the enviable position of having over 1400 young people signed up as collaborators with its main work in schools, colleges and universities across Suffolk, Norfolk and Kent and was therefore able to offer some of those young collaborators the chance to work with Samaritans, on the next phase of the national self-harm awareness campaign.

These young volunteers were involved in a recent workshop which was run by Samaritans in conjunction with London-based market esearch company CRD. The aim of the workshop was to gain an insight into young people’s perception of Samaritans as an organisation and how a self-harm awareness campaign should be produced. The Student Life participants were all young people who had previously self-harmed, as a coping mechanism for periods of mental ill-health.

“We are extremely proud to be working exclusively with Samaritans on this project” said Student Life’s Chief Executive, Richard Stewart. “Because our young participants had self-harmed in the past, they are uniquely placed to be able to steer Samaritans in the correct direction of how to reach out to young people, families and schools across the country through this campaign. Having already been commissioned by the NHS in Suffolk to produce a self-harm awareness workshop for schools, our young team has a wealth of experience in this subject matter and we are determined to highlight the need for education and early intervention”.

To find out more about Student Life, the projects and how to be involved, get in touch at [email protected] or visit www.student-life.co