Peer Supporter (FULLY Remote Contract Role)
About us
At Flourish Labs, we’re on a mission to bring accessible, affordable mental health support to everyone who needs it by empowering people to support each other. We believe that peer support is an effective, yet underutilized solution to the mental health crisis. Peer supporters use their own lived experience of mental health challenges to help others.
We are growing the workforce of Certified Peer Supporters by training students in peer support skills, such as active listening, building rapport, strengths, self-care, coping strategies and safety. We’ll offer peer supporter jobs in our peer support network, launching later this year. Students who want support will be able to find Certified Peer Supporters in our network who match their needs, and book support sessions via our digital platform.
We’re partnering with nonprofits and colleges to bring the peer supporter training and job opportunity to students. Youth Era, a peer-led organization based in Oregon with deep experience in training youth peer supporters, is our training partner. We’ve been designing our program with Active Minds, the largest nationwide network of student mental health volunteers with chapters on over 600 college campuses.
We also offer a free app, håp, which helps students track the ups and downs of their mind, connects them to crisis support and makes it easier to reach out to their friends for support.
About the role
Peer support is a system of giving and receiving help using empathy and shared experience. As a peer supporter, you will model wellness, personal responsibility, self-advocacy, and hopefulness through appropriate sharing of your story based on your own lived experience of mental health challenges.
At Flourish Labs, peer support is delivered virtually on a platform. You will make your schedule available to individuals seeking peer support and meet one-to-one with your supportees.
What you’ll do in this role
- Provide peer support to college students aged 18-25 with mental health challenges, using your own lived experience as well as culturally responsive and evidence-based skills and practices from the training program
- Empower your supportees to advocate for themselves, set goals and implement achievable steps towards reaching them
- Role-model effective problem-solving skills, habits of mental health and wellness hygiene, and help-seeking
- Provide supportees with access to external resources, community support and crisis intervention as needed
- Participate in continuing education, supervision, and additional trainings as relevant
What we’re looking for
The responsibilities and qualifications set out below are a guide to help you and us assess if this role is right for you. You may see the list above and feel discouraged because you don't match all the items. Please apply anyway: there's a good chance you also have important skills we’ve missed!
Prerequisite
- Peer Supporter Certification. You will need to complete training if you are not already certified.
- Flourish Labs will provide our own learning platform for certification. 40 total hours. (35 async, 5 hours sync)
- For more information on Peer Support training, please visit https://flourishlabs.net/peersupportertraining/
Key qualifications
- 18 years old or older
- Have lived experience of mental health challenges or emotional distress or trauma. You do not need to have a formal diagnosis of a mental health condition.
- Are willing to share your story in the context of peer support
- Have been active in your recovery/wellness journey, and out of inpatient and/or hospitalization for at least 6 months
- Have a High School Diploma or equivalent (GED, HiSET, etc), and are enrolled in a college or university
- While the role and training are open to any degree program, the skills you will acquire in the training are particularly relevant to psychology, medicine, counseling, social work, entrepreneurship, law, business studies and related fields.
- Excellent oral communication and interpersonal skills, including empathy and listening
- Able to speak and write in English fluently and idiomatically
Preferred / Additional qualifications
- Ability and interest in working effectively with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures
- Responsible and organized. Ability to work independently, and confidence to ask for help
- Demonstrated social/situational problem-solving skills
- Student or professional/semi professional athletes, current or past
What we offer you
All Flourish Labs peer supporters enjoy the following benefits:
- Free initial training plus additional trainings to attain higher degrees of competency and qualifications
- Attractive compensation
- A meaningful role where you use your own lived experience to help others
- Flexible working hours: set your own schedule
- Flexible work location: support sessions are all held remotely
- Work experience that is relevant for future jobs in mental health and other fields
Diversity, equity & inclusion at Flourish Labs
At Flourish Labs we embrace and support differences because it is the right thing to do, makes us a more fun and effective team, and helps us build better products for our users, who are equally diverse. We are building our products and our company with people who have lived experience of mental health challenges, themselves and/or as a caregiver to others. We are committed to hiring talent with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, and enabling them to flourish at our company by ensuring everyone has a voice and opportunity to succeed. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, veterans, and people with disabilities. We consider part time and job sharing arrangements for any role, just ask.
Equal opportunity statement: We are an equal opportunity employer. If we hire you, it will be based solely on your merit and qualifications directly related to professional competence. We do not discriminate against any employee or applicant because of race, creed, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding), or any other basis protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.