The Lantern Initiative is run by a small team of volunteers based in Peterborough. Our team is made up of individuals, some of whom have been on their own personal journey and experienced mental health issues along the way. Some of our volunteers have experienced the challenges of supporting a close family member or loved one with depression or anxiety. We know what it is like not to have support from within your own community or to be made to feel that you are ‘imagining’ things.

We feel passionate about mental health as a topic and are keen to see a change in community attitudes. We believe communities have the skills and ability to effect mindset and change, which is why we work at grassroots level to support them from within. The Lantern Initiative started from an idea to support women who had just had a baby and had no practical or emotional support around them. Some were suffering from postnatal depression and felt their families did not understand how they were feeling. We started off in Milton Keynes with coffee mornings and informal gatherings where women would talk, vent and offload.

The group became a great source of support and strength for many women and it was growing in numbers. We ended up forming a small support network and meeting regularly in coffee shops and restaurants. All of this resulted in an idea to host our first seminar event led by mental health professionals. Our very first ladies-only event in January 2016 had 70 spaces and astonishingly, every single space was booked. This told us what we needed to know. There was a desperate need for mental health and emotional wellbeing support in the community.

Since that very first seminar event which we named Healing Minds, we have repeated the same programme across Peterborough, Croydon, Whitechapel in East London and Hackney in North London. We now receive requests from community groups in other towns and cities who wish to host our events, so we are working hard to get to a stage where we have the resources and people power to be able to meet these requests.

The Lantern Initiative is a not-for-profit community group. Our services and projects are funded by grants and donations from various charities and individuals.

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The Lantern Initiative

The Lantern Initiative

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