Across Australia, volunteers with lived experience of suicide play a vital role in fostering compassionate, connected, and resilient communities. This poster explores the development and delivery of specialised training designed to support lived experience volunteers to share their stories purposefully and safely, hold space for others in distress, and engage in conversations about suicide with confidence and care, while navigating personal boundaries and ethical considerations.
Grounded in trauma-informed and peer-led principles, the training builds capability through experiential learning, reflective practice, and facilitated discussion. It emphasises emotional awareness and deep listening which enables volunteers to sit alongside pain and uncertainty while maintaining hope and safety for all involved, including themselves.
Emerging stories of impact reveal that volunteers experience increased self-awareness, confidence, and connection to purpose after attending these workshops and completing their online module learnings. Participants report feeling more equipped to respond to others with empathy and to recognise their own needs for support and self-care, which strengthens sustainable volunteer engagement and wellbeing.
By centring lived experience as a source of knowledge and change, this work embodies the conference theme United Voices, Brighter Futures, demonstrating how authentic collaboration, courageous conversation, and compassionate leadership can create lasting cultural and systemic change.