Well hello, lovely person! How are you today?
For our first ever blog, I thought it would be rather useful to tell you about Spark Support, who we are, what we’re doing, and what a few of our future plans are!
Spark is a charity, based in the UK, who want to get people talking about mental health, spark the conversation! We want to connect people who have mental health problems, with our absolutely one of a kind Facebook support group. We want to be there for people when they’re most in need – with our public Facebook, Twitter and Instagram profiles, reminding people that they are awesome and that they can be proud of who they are, no matter what.
We base everything we do on our four values:
- Be yourself – we like free-thinking people working with us – not robots! We like people to pick their own style, not conforming to “the corporate image”!
- Enjoy what you do – You can always tell that person who hates their job. The one who you just know doesn’t want to be there, every interaction is forced. We want our people to want to work with us!
- Help others – We’re a mental health support charity. If helping others isn’t in our ethos, then what’s the point?!
- Ask for help – We never want anyone to feel alone. If someone is struggling, we want people to speak up and tell us. It’s in our nature.
We’re proud of our values. We think it really speaks to who we are!
To tell you more about exactly WHO we are, well… I’m Gareth, the CEO of Spark. I look after the running of the charity, keeping an eye on the technical side of things especially (I’m a techie in my day job, so it makes sense!)
My right-hand woman is Emma Broxton – who heads up our main offering, our Peer Support group. We have Jessy Paston, our clinical lead, who makes sure that the advice we give about therapy and counselling is all above board – and runs her own counselling practice during the day! Rachael Woodman, who is our engagement manager, making sure that our Peer Support group is happy and looked after, and looks after our public-facing things too. Last but by no means least, we have Chantelle Browne, our funding manager, who looks after where our money comes from!
We also have our incredible army of moderators – these are the guys that you see on the group between 9am and midnight, making sure that nobody goes unheard, and that everyone stays safe – we’d be absolutely lost without them, and it really humbles me that people are willing to give up their time for this project – these awesome people are Sarah Noonan, Maggie Goody, James Crick, Laura Williams, Siân Evans and Carrie McColl. Honestly, these guys are amazing – and I’d like to take this opportunity to say a gigantic thank you to them all – they do a mind-blowingly awesome job, and I’m so proud of them all. I’ve never worked with such an awesome team – seriously!
So, you know who we are, what we do. What about… what’s coming up next?
Well, we’ve just launched our birthday club, which celebrates our members’ birthdays in the group, so we can all celebrate their special day. Coming next week, we have the first in our series of blogs called “Through my eyes” – a four-part series of guest blogs, written by people battling with BPD, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety – telling it exactly how it is.
What’s coming up next? Well, we’ve got a few ideas… but also, what do you want us to do? If you’ve got some ideas, pop them in the comments – we really do want to hear them!
But for now, I’m going to quit rambling and sign off!
Peace, love and sparks!
Gareth
