Peer Support All Over the World

Markus Vähälä is CEO of Citizen Network Osk, a not-for-profit global cooperative registered in Finland. The network reaches over 230 organisations all over the world and creates a platform for creating collaboration and cooperation. He would like to invite everybody to join forces in creating a global peer support network. People supporting people is at the heart of creating trust, wellbeing and functioning communities.

Glyn Butcher is a person with lived experience of accessing mental health services that kept him feeling powerless and took him out of his community for over 30 years. Peer support set him free. The power of community made him feel alive. His peers bring healing to his life and his soul. Glyn is now a peer support worker at the People Focused Group in Doncaster, where he gives back to his community as his community gave to him. He is living proof that peer support works, as we embark on our journey of recovery and discovery together.

Markus is guided by his changemaking ideas based on how to create a more just society for all. Through his non-profit organisation, Kukunori, he is championing social welfare through an approach centred on the promotion of human and civil rights. Kukunori ultimately aims to develop new and innovative solutions to challenges in the mental health and cultural sectors. Markus is one of the founders of the Culture House movement based on the awarded Guided Functional Peer Support model developed by Mr Raivio.