1-7 November is National Befriending Week, so we spoke to Hifsah, a befriending volunteer from Mind in Bradford’s Community Companions service.

Community Companions is our volunteer-led befriending service for adults, running in the Bradford district (Bradford, Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven). Our volunteers build a friendship with their match and help build their confidence to get out into the community.

If you can spare one hour a week to help someone in your community, we’d love to hear from you! You can make an application here.

I’m able to support people around the community. I’m able to give companionship, to provide kind of the interactions that they don’t really receive on a daily basis. This is to help provide them with a good development of life, helping them with independence, from what budgeting around what goes around in the community.

It helps my mental health because as I am teaching, I’m kind of learning at the same time. So my mental health kind of gets better once I am kind of boosting somebody else’s mental health. It’s all about making sure your mind is positive. So doing mindful things, daily, preaching and practising things that can be better for you for the future. So yeah, it does help.

I would say definitely sign up for Community Companions. Because there are many befrienders are wanting to help.  They can plan activities with you, they can do assessments. They can also refer you to the services if needed. So what I would say is definitely get the signing in done because once you’ve signed up for it, there will be help there.