David Simpson – A Journey of Peer Support
It is my pleasure to share my journey at KELY Support Group, which started back in September 1997, when I saw an advertisement a local English magazine that KELY was looking for a Youth Outreach Worker.
This immediately caught my attention as prior to arriving in Hong Kong in January that same year I had been heavily involved as a volunteer youth worker at a local cross-community youth group in my home country, Northern Ireland.
I was lucky enough to be hired and my first assignments were to get into schools and run programmes and organise the rota for the KELY Hotline with staff and volunteers. I was fortunate to have a willing team of peers to train me up and over time how to successfully deliver the KELY Peer Support Programme to schools.
The Peer Support Programme was ground-breaking as it equipped young people with the skills necessary to help their fellow peers through whatever problems they may be experiencing. It was run once a week after school for ten weeks and the students that completed it could use their newly acquired skills to help young people the same age. It resonated with me that when a young person has a problem they rarely go straight to their parents or teachers to discuss it, they first go to a friend or someone near their own age. This is the best form of support and what we did with the training was to simply equip young people with listening skills, how to listen, how to respond, how not to respond but most importantly how to demonstrate that you are there for the person, you have their best interests at heart and you want to help. Peer Support in Hong Kong was born. We had tremendous support from parents and teachers and the peer support training became part of the curriculum at some schools which gave us lots of validation and a big badge of honour with students, teachers, parents and funders all across Hong Kong.
I left KELY in 2002 to explore other opportunities but remained closely connected to the organisation support fundraising events such as Wanchai Live and KELY Circus School. In 2018 I was invited to join The Board and once again I was lucky to have a willing team of Board Members to help me find my way to be successful in my role. Now in 2024 I was elected as Chairperson and I am grateful to The Board, The KELY Full-Time Staff and Volunteers and the Youth of Hong Kong for their support as I have kind of gone full-circle, while all the time having valuable peer support throughout my journey – hopefully you can never escape it!
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