Volunteer for MindMate
Are you passionate about improving young people’s mental health and wellbeing? Are you aged 16-24 and living in Leeds? There are so many ways you can get involved!
Why volunteer with MindMate?
- To have fun, experience new things and meet new people
- To have YOUR say, both with professionals and your peers
- Help raise awareness in Leeds
- To build confidence and other skills
- A great way to boost a personal statement for university application, or a CV
- It can feel rewarding and meaningful
- We really value young people’s voices, this is central to our work
Our volunteers receive a full induction and have scope to get involved in a variety of areas that are of interest to you. Our volunteers receive support throughout the role and guidance to grow and learn.
Ways you can get involved as a volunteer
Some examples below are volunteer opportunities with MindMate, but this is flexible to what you are interested in. We always want to hear from you, so if there’s something not mentioned here that you’d like to be involved with, then get in touch at and talk to us about it.
If you’ve got something to say you can write about or speak about it! We’re going to record a series of chats for our MindMate podcast this Winter. All sorts on the topic of mental health and emotional wellbeing, from gaming to Pride to coping with Christmas. It’s a great way to get your voice and ideas out there, and get other people thinking.
Help shape the MindMate website by approving and creating content.
Join our closed Facebook group to keep up to date with new projects, events, discuss ideas, opportunities, all things MindMate and more.
Attend different events across the city, e.g. helping on an information stall to raise awareness about MindMate, talking to young people, professionals and members of the public.
Follow, like and share our social media posts:
Whether at events, online, or with your peers… raising awareness about MindMate and promoting young people’s mental wellbeing.
Our MindMate volunteers meet every month to discuss important issues around mental health in Leeds… for example how services are developing, advising on the website, creating videos/blogs/podcasts, planning for upcoming events, advising guest speakers.
*Please note, unfortunately face to face panel meetings are currently on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic*
How to get involved
Complete and submit this form and we will contact you to tell you more about what opportunities are happening now.
Head over to the MindMate Volunteer page on Facebook to find out what’s going on. This is a closed group so you need to request to join.
An example of why our volunteers are so important
Making MindMate wasn’t quite like making any other site
We want to make sure that every section and page is truly useful so we’ve worked with young people, professionals and parents/carers every step of the way, using their advice to make MindMate even better.
- Young people help decide what content should be included on the site
- They help us to choose the topics that really matter to young people
- We work with them to develop our tone voice and decide on more straightforward terms like ‘feeling sad’ instead of ‘depression’
- We work them to decide how the site should look. They told us it should be simple, easy to use, bright and accessible, without being kiddie
- Young people help test the site and games, and decide on future developments.
Every word, link and resource we use is approved by young people – whether it was written for them or it’s a resource that MindMate is recommending for professionals to use with children and young people. We’re changing the site all the time, adding new content, topics, games etc, to make sure we’re giving young people in the city what they need.
Oh, and, of course it’s young people in Leeds who provide the voices for our animations and films, too (after they’ve helped us to write the script, that is).
