Nightline Awareness Week

It’s Nightline Awareness Week and the volunteers are sharing tea and hugs!Free hugs during Nightline Awareness Week

Nightline Awareness week aims to promote this valuable free listening service run by students for students. A variety of events are being held throughout the week to remind students how Nightline is here to help.

Look out for the Nightline Ninjas and Dafydd the friendly mascot around the campus this week.

· Dafydd and the Nightline Ninjas have a tea party at Main Arts Wednesday 1st 1:00 - 1:45pm
· Dafydd and the Nightline Ninjas have a tea party at Normal Site Wednesday 1st 2:00 - 3:00pm
· Nightline bake sale Ffriddoedd Site Thursday 2nd February 12:30 pm
· Nightline movie night Thursday 2nd February 7:30pm Main Arts Lecture Theatre
· Nightline information and recruitment stall in the Wheldon building Friday 3rd February 10:00 - 1:00

Nightline is open from 8pm to 8am and students can call the service for any information they may need or to get support in the form of a non-judgmental, non-advisory listening ear. Nightline’s aim this week is to increase the general awareness of the service through a range of different events held in and around the University.

The Nightline Coordinator explained “The tea party theme is to promote taking a break once in a while, and taking care of yourself. Having a cup of tea, coffee or juice - just making sure you step back once in a while and pace yourself, because life can get tough, and university brings a lot of extra stress into the equation”.

She also added, “Our volunteers come from varied backgrounds, cultures, subjects and age groups. But we all have one thing in common as Bangor University students, we all want to help out our fellow students. Nightline covers an important area: making sure that students have an out of hours service, run by their peers, which is there all night to make sure that there is always someone to talk to, no matter what they need to talk about! We run our service according to these principles that we take very seriously – confidentiality, anonymity, non-judgmental, non-advisory and non-directive.”

“For most of our volunteers, making sure this service continues to exist and is open as much as possible during term-time is the main reason they choose to do it. Volunteering in general gives you that fantastic feeling of helping someone and promotes caring about yourself and others, and Nightline is no exception.”

Not only does Nightline hope to raise awareness of their service but they also hope to recruit and gain more volunteers. No qualifications are needed, all Bangor University students are eligible to volunteer and extensive training is given to make sure that volunteers get all the skills they need to successfully become a part of the service, and to make sure they continue to deliver a high standard to their callers.

Nightline asks their volunteers to devote four nights of their choice per semester to volunteering, so that they can stay open as much as possible. There are two volunteer intakes every year, at the beginning of each semester, to allow new members to take part in training. Due to the nature of the training, Nightline can't accept volunteer applications outside of these times, but if someone is interested, they should contact Nightline (nightline@undeb.bangor.ac.uk) and they will e-mail them to remind them when the next volunteer intake is happening.Dafydd the Bear during Nightline Awareness Week

If you have any questions or are interested in becoming a volunteer, go along to one of this week’s events or visit their website http://www.undeb.bangor.ac.uk/nightline/en/ or find Bangor University Nightline or Dafydd Nightline, the friendly mascot on Facebook. And remember, Nightline’s number is on the back of your student card!

Publication date: 1 February 2012