Canterbury Students Launch Innovative Support Enterprise to Help Young Locals

#MentalHealthAwarenessWeek – Students from @EKC__Group’s Canterbury College have launched an innovative online support enterprise to help young locals called, ‘Talk2aM8’.

Founded by Level 3 Animal Management student, Jack Feury, and his friends, ‘Talk2aM8’ aims to raise awareness of the importance of mental wellbeing by providing peer-to-peer support and safe virtual spaces for young people to talk about their feelings and experiences.

“We originally started a thing called ‘SLSG’, which stands for ‘Suicide Loss Support Group’, as we wanted to help others who had lost people to suicide,” explained Jack.

He continued: “The idea was to create a network of people who they could feel comfortable talking to, not just about suicide and mental health, but anything they could possibly want to, and for it to be a safe space.”

From their initial idea, Jack and his friends have developed their peer network into other areas of support, creating ‘Talk2aM8’ as an umbrella for the wide range of services available.  

Alongside their peer-to-peer discussions, ‘Talk2aM8’ offers a pioneering ‘GetHomeSafe’ text messaging service, allowing people who are travelling alone and feel uneasy, or who would like some company, to talk to a member of the ‘Talk2aM8’ team whilst making the journey home.

Most recently, the Team have been focussing on lifting peoples’ spirits during the lockdown, creating light-hearted videos and performing acts of kindness in the local area.

Talking about the importance of helping others, Jack commented: “I know from experience that all it can take is for one person to be an anchor and to be reliable, and I want to be able to offer that to as many people as I can. We all do.”