Our Story
Red Balloons was developed in 2017, adapted from a blog from our founder Claire and her lived experience of ill mental health. Supported through her work as a volunteer for Mind and Middlesbrough and Stockton Mind, Red Balloons first came onto social media, to promote how exercise can help you manage your physical and mental health, before becoming a Peer Support group, meeting on Tuesday evenings. These meetings offered a safe space for people to voice their stories and their issues getting help and support, while receiving ideas and hints on how to improve their health, as well as motivation, encouragement and a sense of understanding.
Through the help and support of local organisations, such as Raindrops to Rainbows, Stockton Navigation, Stockton Soup, Cleveland Police, Stockton Riverside College, Hartlepool College of Further Education and the local media, Red Balloons has skyrocketed over the last two years. Through the sharing of Claire’s story of her suicide attempt to how exercise saved her life, we can now offer a variety of services across Teesside to help others.
Mental health is not a Monday to Friday, 9-5 illness, therefore we try to offer services outside of these times. We are an inclusive community, where we do not use the words such as service users, but anyone who accesses anything we do are referred to as “Members”. Everyone 16+, is welcome to join us, with Youth Services to be introduced in 2021/22.
We are currently a not for profit organisation, relying heavily on low overheads and fundraising to raise vital funds to enable us to continue our work. We are not trained counsellors or mental health professionals, what we are are people who have real life experience of a range of mental health conditions, who want to use this to help others. We want to help give our members the tools to be more confident in their own management of their conditions, knowing they have a staring support network to catch them if they fully. We are looking to achieve charitable status this year, which will enable us to improve and increase the services we offer and who we can reach.
We are very excited to see what this year, and the future holds for Red Balloons, the team of amazing volunteers and all of our members. A massive Thank You to everyone who has got us this far. We really could not have done it without you!
We're over the moon to announce that Red Balloons has been successful in securing funding via the National Lottery Community Fund to set up and run our Community Wellbeing Ambassadors Project across Tees Valley. This funding will allow us to recruit, train and support Volunteers to become Ambassadors in their communities – organising and running Walk and Talk Sessions and Run and Rant Sessions and supporting people with their mental and physical health. We will ensure that Volunteers receive relevant training and have 100% support and that the project offers them valuable personal development opportunities. The project will also build capacity in the organisation allowing us to support many more people to improve their mental and physical health while giving them someone who will listen and do their best to support.
We'd like to send a massive thank you to the National Lottery Community Fund for believing in us, supporting us and giving us the opportunity to work towards realising our vision and mission. We'd also like to thank National Lottery players without whom this funding wouldn't be available.
For further information on Volunteering Opportunities, referrals, partnership working, support available – please contact Leigh via email – redballoons.volunteers@gmail.com
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