Introducing...the community champions

[Chris_B]

Hi everyone,

Some of you may have noticed that a few of our members are labelled ‘Community champion’ and have a beyondblue National Roadshow bus badge, like this:

 

This thread explains who these members are and what they do.

Community champions are volunteers within the forums who:

• Have the time, skills and empathy to support other members
• Make an effort to welcome new members
• Are regularly and actively engaged members  that help set the tone of our community as a place of hope and recovery. 

Click here to find out more about how you can become a Community Champion!  As this is a peer support community that includes members under the age of 18, it is important that we ensure our peer support community leaders have a current 'working with children' check as part of due diligence.  In an online environment with anonymous posters, it also provides Beyond Blue (and the community) with some security as to the identity of who is posting as a community champion.

We ask our community champions to spend at least 2-3 hours a week posting and responding in the forums, but in reality they go far above and beyond this. 

Like me, they’re not psychologists or counsellors, just regular folk like yourselves who have experience with anxiety and depression. I’ll leave it to our champion volunteers to reply below and let you know a bit about themselves.

PS. If this is your first time on the forums and you'd like to introduce yourself, please start a new thread rather than replying in here.

[Bob_22]

Hi there 🙂

I'm Bob_22 and have recently discovered the forums here. It's like a treasure cove of advice and wish I had known about this sooner! Hope you can find something here too.

I'm honoured to also become a Community Champ. I hope I can use my story to help yourself and others here on the forums who might have a similar experience. My journey starts around 10 years ago with my first episode of Major Depressive Disorder. I was halfway through uni and had to defer 18months due to my health. Since graduating I've discovered a passion for working in the mental health and not-for-profit sector. My experience with MDD has given me insight into feat that is living with mental illness and some of the difficulties one might have along the road.

My hobbies include reading, exercising, painting, gaming and watching movies. I really enjoy connecting with people and communities and working together to solve problems.

Hope to see you around. 🙂

[quirkywords]

Welcome Bob to the forum. Using one’s experience to help others is what I have been doing for over 5O years.

I am glad you are a champ and can support others here.

[sbella02]

Welcome to the forums/Champs, Bob_22, great to have you on board 🙂