Safe in Our World announces new moves for Mental Health Awareness Month

Safe in Our World, a charity focused on mental health and the gaming community, announced new initiatives and programs in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month. This month, it’s bringing on new hires and board members. It’s also committing to training 150 new community managers.

The charity adds Benn Wiebe as its strategy and corporate partnerships officer and Sky Tunley-Stainton as partnerships and training officer. The latter will also focus on expanding the #LevelUpMentalHealth program. Safe in Our World launched the campaign last year, and the charity revealed it now has over 100 partners.

In addition to the new staff, Safe in Our World also gains 4 new trustees this month: Suneet Sharma, Alex Boucher, Ian Harman, and Gem Abdeen.

Video games and mental health

Safe in Our World launched in 2019 with a focus on raising awareness of mental health in the gaming community. It currently offers free mental health training courses for community managers, and it has trained 200 so far. It has extended that goal to 150 more. As part of the month, it’s also encouraging users to play games that make them happy and promoting a theme of “togetherness.”

Leo Zullo, co-founder and chairperson of Safe in Our World, said in a statement, “Our industry continues to show its resilience, strength and support for those in need through our unified love of games and community, which is why Safe In Our World is growing and further aiding the industry, gamers and all those around. It has become even more important to maintain good mental health, and help those who need it. This year’s ‘together’ theme couldn’t be more indicative of our industry.”

Zullo also told GamesBeat in an interview, “The job ahead is really important. Safe in Our World came together as a passion project, and the number of people who want to help is overwhelming. The next 12 months, there are going to be lots of programs, help, and content — for gamers and for the industry. If you think about it, 50% of the world plays a game, so we’ve got a big target audience. We’re in a strong position to try and help as many people as possible.”