Chasing rabbits in Antwerp

Written by Camilla Rode Jensen.

Last week I participated in the seminer ‘exploring online peer-to-peer support project’ organized by In Petto in Belgium.

Inspired by an early walk in the lovely park in Antwerp, Mick Conroy encouraged us all to chase rabbits when he did his conclusions of the peer to peer seminar. By that he meant working out key messages that we have gained form the seminar which brought a lot of different perspectives together on online peer to peer support. Here are the rabbits that I caught and brought back to Denmark.

 European networking

A lot of rabbits are now back in their native homes, far away from Antwerp. It became clear that many organisations working with peer-to-peer support online as well as offline face the difficulties of documenting the effect of their work. It also became clear, that this is a great issue regarding to

fundraising. We might benefit form bringing our rabbits back together exchanging knowledge on the effect study issue. This is one of the ideas I’ll be looking into as an outcome of the seminar.

 Another issue is exchanging knowledge about how to educate and train volunteers especially when it comes to doing online support. Whether volunteers are peers or professionals, doing online support requires specific skills in order to make sure, that the best support is provided. Again I think we could learn from each other by exchanging experience.

Inspiration

I had the opportunity to tell about Cyberhus peer to peer activities. Due to the fact that we do not have engaged peer advisers I represented a slightly different perspective on peer to peer support – focusing on how to create open safe online environments with in which peers can interact. At the same time I was inspired by the engagement and energy from the peer advisers at the seminar. During my workshops I was giving good ideas on how to engage peer advisers in Cyberhus activities as for example discussion creators, role models and moderators. I brought these rabbits home as well to present for my colleagues.

All together I brought enough rabbits back home to make a nice stew – or maybe that’s taking the symbolics a little to far….

A great thanks to the In Petto team for organising and hosting this inspiring seminar – and lots of greetings to you from Denmark…