Celebrating Peer Support: The Saathi Awards Evening

Six months is not a long time. And yet, by the time Saathis from Cohort 1 gathered on 30 April 2026, something had clearly shifted. The evening brought together the Saathis, their supervisors, the programme investigators, and team members, all present for one reason and that was to recognise the efforts these young people had put into the programme over the preceding months.

They had come together for the inaugural Saathi Awards, created to thank the people who had spent six months showing up for others. Peer support does not announce itself. It happens in a room somewhere on a college campus or remotely, between two students, one of whom has made a quiet decision to show up for the other. It asks for time, emotional energy, and skill, often while the person offering it is carrying the full weight of their own academic and personal life. The awards were designed to honour exactly that. Reliability, initiative, thoughtful communication, and genuine enthusiasm for supporting peers were the qualities the award night sought to celebrate. The nomination and selection process was careful and considered, drawing on six months of observation across attendance, participation, contribution, and the quality of sessions facilitated.

The evening opened with supervisors speaking to the Saathis they had worked alongside most closely. What they said was specific. They spoke about showing up every single time without complaint. About the persistence it takes to keep going when the work is not easy and the results can only be seen gradually. About the enthusiasm these young people had brought to something that asked a great deal of them, and the genuine warmth with which they had extended themselves towards their peers. It was the kind of acknowledgement that is only possible when someone has actually been paying attention, and it landed that way.

The supervisors had spoken about what they had seen. What followed was the Saathis speaking about what they had felt. One by one, they found words for an experience that had been quietly reshaping them. They talked about the moment something shifted in a conversation with a peer, when they realised the support they were offering was landing, that it was making a difference to someone's day or week or sense of not being alone. They reflected on the skills they had built, not just in facilitation or active listening, but in patience, in staying present, in knowing when to speak and when simply to stay. More than one person said, in different ways, that these were not skills they would leave behind at the end of the programme. They were ways of being with people that would travel with them into their careers, their relationships, and everything that came next. And then, with a warmth that had not been scripted, they turned towards their supervisors. The gratitude was not ceremonial. It was the kind that only accumulates over months of being genuinely guided and genuinely seen.

Twelve awards were presented across four categories. The awards night was, at its heart, a celebration of the Saathis, of how they had grown into the role while showing up for their peers. The METROPOLIS study will capture the impact of that support in numbers, in time to come. This evening belonged to the Saathis who are making it happen, one day at a time.