Cat Borrie, Board Moderator

by The Mix Staff

Tuesday 21st April 2015

Cat has been a discussion board moderator since February 2014, responding to posts on all sorts of topics from members of our community. Cat works for a YouthNet partner, Capital One and loves using some of her spare time to volunteer online and support young people in our online community.

During that time Cat has completed our e-learning module on Essential Skills for giving support online and is supported in her role by staff moderators to be fully skilled up, trained, and comfortable in moderating the discussion boards.

Cat’s a big time volunteer and has been doing volunteering of sorts since primary school, but was finding it harder to find an opportunity that fit around her full-time job and that offered her some flexibility. Being able to help YouthNet, a Capital One partner, and support young people at the same time, as well as fitting the volunteering around her schedule meant the becoming a board moderator was a great fit.

She’s found that she can get genuinely emotionally attached to people’s stories and wants to hear how they’ve got on and how YouthNet has helped them. There are sometimes some pretty hard to read questions and often Cat wishes she could do more to help, which she says has been tough to get used to. On the whole she finds it incredibly rewarding though.

When Cat isn’t volunteering she’s running market research projects – bringing a consumer voice into business decisions, so she’s pretty good at communication. If YouthNet had unlimited funds Cat would build loads of buildings so that young people could get face-to-face support and believes the reputation and perception of YouthNet would make these spaces approachable, friendly and make young people feel safe and secure whilst looking for advice and support.