Today we celebrate our 24th birthday! We've spent the last 24 years dedicated to listening to what matters to TeenHelpers worldwide, supporting them to learn and grow and cope with the challenges in their lives. The world looks different now than it did 24 years ago, but we're still here, still responding to young people and still finding new ways to help.
Here's what's happening today:
Volunteer Awards
As we often do, I'm pleased to announce that the winners of our Summer Awards are:
- Kayla (Oneirophobia) - Kayla shares lovely uplifting photos in the Chat Room, which always helps to brighten things up. She's also a great photographer and has recently made a wonderful poster for TeenHelp. She's a supportive member and pleasant to talk to. She's done some good work in social media too.
- Rika - Rika is really active and supportive in Chat and recently did some great work for Outreach. Although she hasn't been on Staff for too long, she has already much such a positive contribution to TeenHelp and is a big asset to the team. Rika also came up with some good ideas for recent Terms and Service changes.
- Sarah (eaty) - Sarah is always in the Chat Room making sure runs smoothly. This year she has put in place loads of fun new activities to keep people entertained from movie nights to polls and topics of the month which made the Chat environment great. A Chat member told us "She was one of the first people I spoke to here, and she was volunteering even back then."
- Sue (Silvan) - Sue has made beautiful infographics and social media graphics, which has brightened up our pages. She also took the initiative to make a post for Halloween and made wonderful designs for us to use in our profiles. She's great at writing captions for social media and posts interesting topics around the Forums. She's a dedicated volunteer and a great asset to TeenHelp. A member told us, "I think her graphics are fantastic!" and "Makes them fun and appealing to members". Her work should not go unnoticed as she puts the effort into making those.
Each award winner will receive 12 months of additional features on the site & 5,000 experience points. Congratulations everyone!
Take part
Join one of our discussions today such as:
Action Plan update
We recently revealed
our five year plan, I'm happy to share the first of our annual updates of how we're doing towards this. It's only been a few months yet we've made a great start so far, including:
- Improving volunteer support - Included new training resources, regular meetings, profiles and lots of roles for people to get involved in
- New activities across the site - from celebrating Volunteers' Week & Mental Health Awareness week, to new Chat activities like games and movie nights
- Moved Live Help to the Chat Room and added new features to Chat
- Set up Points system
- Taken action to improve diversity and inclusion on the site
- Updated our Terms of Service to be clearer and add new ideas from our members
- Set up a TikTok page
Phew, not bad for the first few months!