Wayne Senior, Content Team Supervisor and Growth Officer
At this time of year, new students leave their parents for parts of the country they have never visited, as they begin a new adventure at university. This year, No Panic is joining some of them, and for us too, it will be a new adventure.
Anxiety affects students who are starting university, and students who are further along their university journey. No Panic wants to help. For us to be able to help anxious students, they need to know we exist, and be aware of the support we offer.
We are a small national charity. The vast majority of our volunteers volunteer on the helpline. We only have a couple of paid staff.
For us to reach more students, we need new volunteers. We need volunteers who are at university, and can therefore raise awareness at university fairs, and deliver talks to health students. We have created a new Student Ambassador role, and we are recruiting now.
Student Ambassadors will raise awareness of anxiety, helping students who have never experienced anxiety to better understand how it affects people. Raising awareness of anxiety will help students studying for careers which may bring them into contact with anxious members of the public.
An understanding of anxiety can also help students while they are at university. A common problem people who have anxiety experience, is lack of understanding from friends and loved ones. Students will be able to better support their friends if they have panic attacks.
Student Ambassadors will not provide support to people who have anxiety. Instead, they will tell students about the support No Panic has to offer. We will provide Student Ambassadors with the information they need, so they can tell students about our helpline, our recovery services, our online Anxiety Support Chat, and even our Single Session Mentoring which is handy if you’re anxious on the day of an exam, anxious because you’re about to go back to university after a holiday or anxious because you’re about to fly abroad for a holiday.
We don’t expect Student Ambassadors to do all the work at their university themselves. To make the role easier and less stressful, we are recruiting teams of Student Ambassadors. We hope to have 3 or 4 Student Ambassadors in each Student Team. Each university where we are recruiting Student Ambassadors will have a Student Team.
Just as new students start university every year, other students complete their studies and leave university. Student
Teams will provide continuity.
This type of work is new to No Panic, so we are only targeting a few universities in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and the Midlands. However, we hope that over time we can expand this initiative to more universities across the UK, enabling us to reach even more students.
If you would like to become a Student Ambassador for No Panic, please apply here.
