Many Hands project

Many Hands was a collaborative project led by IHE and seven specialist higher education providers in the UK. Co-funded by the Office for Students (OfS) as part of the Mental Health funding competition, the project provided a peer-to-peer mentoring service for students seeking early intervention support for their mental health and wellbeing.

The project set out to evaluate the impact of peer-to-peer mentoring on supporting the mental health of students from particular groups or backgrounds. Peer-to-peer mentoring is a proven effective mental health intervention, offering students in difficulty a mentor who has faced similar challenges and experiences.

Students eligible to participate in the project included those studying at one of the seven partner institutions, who were also:

mature students
Black, Asian or ethnic minority students
students studying a creative subject

Students were matched to a specially trained team of mentors across the seven institutions, connecting to someone who has faced similar life challenges, in a discreet and easy to access way.

The project's collaborative approach sought to addresses the barriers to developing and accessing these services in smaller higher education providers.