Mental health and its impact on Kiwis has been in the spotlight recently, with support for high profile calls for people to talk openly, and without stigma, about how they’re really feeling.

But it’s an innovative world-first approach to offering immediate mental health support to young Kiwis that caught the eye and backing of the Vodafone New Zealand Foundation.

Vodafone New Zealand Foundation chair, Antony Welton said Zeal, a youth organisation helping excluded and disadvantaged young people, is a fantastic recipient for the Foundation’s first Technology Grant Partnership.

“We wanted to utilise the expertise and skills that sit within Vodafone to benefit the community and this is an important step towards doing that. We thought how can we use technology to have positive impacts on young people all around the country?” Antony said.

Late last year Zeal received seed money from the Vodafone New Zealand Foundation to launch the pilot of an Online Crisis Intervention service to combat suicide amongst young people.

“This is incredibly exciting, it has so much potential to positively impact on young people and it’s such an innovative space to work in,” Antony said.

Zeal General Manager Elliot Taylor said that providing live interpersonal support on social media is vital.

“If you’re a young person spending significant amounts of time on the internet it’s only natural that your struggles are going to make their way online. A simple search on Instagram or Tumblr, will reveal thousands of young people disclosing moments of crisis. The more time we spent on social media, the more obvious it was that a response was needed.

“If I was to hear this level of disclosure in real life, then I’d have a duty of care to provide support. We think the same applies online,” Elliot said.

The seed money funded training for a team of volunteers to go online to proactively offer support.

“We aim to relieve distress, strengthen protective and coping factors, and connect users to other localised help services. Young people are consistently appreciative of our support. We receive comments like “Yes I could talk to someone, please help” or “You reaching out means the world to me”.

“The project is complex in many ways but also very simple. What we’re doing is reaching out to those in distress and providing them with support. We want to do that for as many young people as we can around New Zealand and the world,” Elliot added.

For Zeal, the Online Crisis Intervention project came to life after a raft of research, underlined the need for it.

“The literature is unequivocal that more needs to be done. 4 out of 5 young Kiwis that we surveyed have seen others post about being in crisis. For anyone outside that millennial age group this is a surprise, whereas young people and youth workers see it all the time.

“Our pilot programme had quite a fantastic response. Young people said they valued our support, found it useful, and felt themselves less at risk,” Elliot said.

The $160,000 Vodafone New Zealand Foundation Technology Development grant means the volunteers will now be able to extend the hours and shifts they cover.

“Our dream is to offer support to young people when and where they need it. In moments of crisis, we need other people to support us. We’re talking to young people across New Zealand, America, Canada, and Germany. We don’t even know what’s going to happen when we start widening the languages we offer, so it’s incredibly exciting,” Elliot said.