August 1, 2024
What a year this has been for London Nightline! The end of the academic year gives us a great opportunity to reflect on our successes and the hard work of our community.
This year, we’ve trained 60 incredible new volunteers. Each time a student decides to dedicate their time to volunteering with London Nightline, it shows us how powerful peer support is, how much young people care about mental health and being there for one another. We know how important our community is not just to our callers, but to our team as well, and we’re so happy to have our new volunteers on board.
Collectively, this team of volunteers have spent 707 hours on phone calls and IMs with students across London in 2023-24. That adds up to 30 whole days – a solid month of active listening support! This shows us that we’re needed as much as ever, fuelling our mission of being there for every student who might need us.
In May, a team of new and experienced runners ran the Hackney Half Marathon and raised over £4,500 for us. The group included current and former volunteers, staff at our affiliate institutions, and friends of London Nightline. It was an amazing atmosphere and we were so proud to cheer them on as they crossed the finish line. We also held a pub quiz fundraiser, which was a great chance to test everyone’s trivia whilst raising some money to continue our vital work. We’re hoping to repeat both events next year.
We’ve won not one, but two awards this year! As if winning UCL’s volunteering organization of the year wasn’t enough, the national Nightline Association kindly awarded us Nightline of the Year. This is a huge achievement and testament to the tireless work of our volunteers and operations team.
It’s also been a year of representing London Nightline in the mental health conversation. Our Director attended the Smarten Mental Health Conference to speak about the benefits of peer support. Being invited to Parliament to attend the youth suicide prevention APPG gave us insight into the community of services and experiences we operate within and the chance to push for change on a national scale. We were touched to hear the stories of those who’ve lost loved ones to suicide, and to learn more about the work they’re doing towards a world where fewer young people die by suicide.
We’re excited to see where the next academic year takes us! You can keep up with our updates on social media, @londonnightline across all platforms.
