NU Listens Active Listening Workshops

Who Are We?

The mission of NU Listens is to provide all Northwestern students, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation or gender representation, with a free, confidential peer listening service. We also aim to improve the mental health climate at Northwestern by promoting education and conversation regarding mental health issues. As members of NU Listens, we promise to do everything within our power to take all students’ issues into account in a safe, non-judgmental environment and to serve the student body directly and offer a free and confidential alternative to students looking for a space to vent, disclose insecurities, and/or work on possible solutions to their problems. For now, our trained peer listener group consists of about 15 NU students from various schools, majors, backgrounds, and interests. We are advised by Dr. John Dunkle, the Executive Director of CAPS at Northwestern. We are here not as professionals, but as friends, supporting our peers.

Our Project

We are raising money to host a series of workshops for students interested in learning active listening skills. We regularly receive inquiries from students who are interested in being trained as listeners but can’t put in the time for our extensive program. Also, the formal NU Listens training program is currently only available to twelve students each year. With your financial support, we will host workshops that will bring key components of our training program to the Northwestern community by teaching active listening skills to our peers.

The valuable skills our Listeners learn in our program will help strengthen relationships and make Northwestern a more encouraging and safe environment for students. Through these workshops, students will learn invaluable skills that will contribute to creating a more supportive and healthy environment. These smaller events would allow active listening skills to reach a much wider audience, and also give people an opportunity to meet the NU Listens Executive Board face-to-face and ask questions they may not be comfortable asking via email or Facebook. These workshops will contribute to campus because we can all learn to be better friends, better leaders, and better classmates. Mental health affects everyone’s quality of life, and it’s something our workshops will address and hopes to improve.