Every year, we arrange The ”Viacommunity Day” at our Stockholm office. It’s an international initiative that is held at all Viacom offices around the globe, and a day when all colleagues engage in an activity to give back to society.
This year we teamed up with Mind, a non-profit organization that works with the very important subject of mental health. You might recognize Mind as the brand behind the help lines “Suicide line”, “Parent line” or “Elderly line” – or simply from their engagement in talking about mental health.
Our hopes for Viacommunity Day were that we would be able to share knowledge between our co-workers and to increase awareness about mental health. The day started off with Selene Cortes from Mind holding a lecture about their work followed by interesting discussions from the floor. Our co-workers then sat down in groups for a workshop. Then we all brainstormed and discussed ways for Mind to reach out and make even more people aware of how big the issue of mental health really is.
Statistically, three out of four of your colleagues are already affected. 1.5 million Swedes have had suicidal thoughts during the last year. Sweden’s youth has never felt worse. Mental illness is our most widespread disease and we pay the price in both lives and money. Mind saves lives every day, but there’s still work to do.
We can definitely say that our hopes about knowledge sharing and awareness increasing, were reached. Thank you Mind for a very giving day,
Viacom Nordics