What Nightline Volunteering Means To Me

As with many people who sign up to London Nightline, before joining I have had experiences directly and through friends, with mental health and mental health support systems. And through these interactions I believe that you can really tell how much meaningful difference it makes to be able to access the support that really suits you. Yet, through the training program, the role that Nightline plays in the greater ecosystem of mental health support really resonated with me personally, in its non-directional and non-judgemental listening, and with the service running at night – a time when we can often feel more isolated, as our thoughts take some more drastic detours.  

Over my time volunteering with London Nightline, the service has been everything I’ve imagined and more. I have helped to enable the service to be available for people who want to reach out, but don’t want to feel like a burden to those around them at the odd hours of the night.

Cause at the end of the day, though I don’t know what happened to each caller, or how significant each individual call was for the person on the other end, I know for a fact that at least for a moment of time I was able to provide some relief in being there to listen.

Yet what I didn’t expect was the genuine sense of community in volunteering at London Nightline with the truly wonderful people I’ve met through my time here, and the warm environment of openness and stringent internal support that really centres both the caller’s experience and volunteers’ welfare.

I could go on about the genuine future career benefits and the inter-personal skills developed over my time here, but my only major regret is that I will have to leave Nightline at some point and no longer be as present of a part of this community. But in having seen what impact volunteering at London Nightline can have, it is more than a consolation to know that it’ll still be there to support others even as the individual volunteers have to move on.

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