Working with others Awards

2025 winners: Niharika Anand and Siddhi Srivastav.

This award celebrates the best teamwork between Mentor buddies. 

This year’s dream team set the bar high with their proactive event planning, upskilling, and meticulous time management. Their commitment to collaboration and their generous spirit uplifted S2S and the wider college community.

2025 winner: Rianna Wong

“Why did the narcissist cross the road? Because I told them it was one of my boundaries”. 

This award celebrates the expert way in which a volunteer can identify and uphold a healthy boundary in their role. 

This year’s winner was contacted right before 5pm on a Friday evening by a student they were supporting, and immediately identified that they would need ongoing support. Instead of swooping in, they knew to refer the student on to S2S staff. Talking to the distressed student, the staff noted how much they had been bringing to their Peer Support meetups, and immediately checked-in with this volunteer to make sure she was OK. Staff were surprised by how unphased she was by what she’d been dealing in with. She explained that she followed everything she was taught in training, and that meant she could walk away from a meetup and, so long as she knew the student was not at risk, she wouldn’t worry about it again until the next meetup. She didn’t see it as a skill, just as her knowing how to follow rules, but we think she’s a master at boundaries! 

2025 winner: Bella Bolstad.

This award celebrates true commitment to self-care. 

This year, the self-care expert award goes to someone who has demonstrated impeccable awareness of the importance self-care in all of their trainings. Every time it comes up, they share really helpful tips and tricks with their fellow volunteers. They had to take a step back from some of their roles for health reasons, and were so communicative and clear about what they needed and when. Then, when they came back, they wrote their capstone project on digital empathy, including the role of self-compassion in the digital space. But they didn’t just write it, they shared all of the resources they’d put together with every single S2S volunteer, with the SCS Outreach team and with the Student Advisory Board, and we’re all using them! 

2025 winner: Honey Morris.

This award celebrates the most striking engagement with empathy shown by a volunteer. 

This is a new award which has been especially designed to recognise one of those moments that will inevitably become S2S lore, and be spoken about in trainings for years to come (if this volunteer consents, of course). 

We wanted to recognise a Peer Supporter who met a few times with a student, and struggled to connect with them. Knowing that it would be impossible to offer good support without connection, they discussed switching to another Peer Supporter, and planned how to do it sensitively. In the next meetup, as they were putting the plan into action, the student’s response to one of their questions made them stop. They could have glossed over it, but they really wanted to understand exactly what the student meant, so the dug back in, and they went in a different direction. By the end of that meeting, they hand found a point of connection, and they decided to stay with the case. They’d had to dig really deep to find that connection, but they didn’t let that stop them.