You don’t have to figure it out alone: Saathi Support welcomes freshers

Starting college comes with a lot of change. Even more so at O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU): a residential university with a packed calendar of events, a big campus that can be hard to navigate, and, most importantly, a new community to find your place in.  

As the fall semester and new academic year began at JGU, the Saathi Support team carried with them one simple message for freshers: you don’t have to figure it all out alone. 

On 2 August 2026, the team joined the Jindal Global Business School (JGBS) student orientation for two brief announcements. On-campus researcher Chaitali Mishra began by breaking the ice and inviting students to reflect on the mixed emotions that can come with starting college. The session introduced Saathi Support as a space where students can seek support from a fellow trained peer (Saathi), and encouraged students to practise positive coping skills to help settle into residential campus life.

The team continued this conversation through an information booth on 5 August 2026. Here, as part of the team’s campus outreach, a small interactive activity was run where students were invited to leave messages for incoming freshers: anything they wished they could tell their first-year selves.

The messages ranged from warm wishes and playful jokes to honest advice and gentle warnings. One third-year student wrote, “Don’t worry about fitting in. You’ll find your people eventually!” Others encouraged freshers to focus on academics, shared words of advice, and wished them good luck for the journey ahead. 

Together, these messages created a warm peer-supportive environment, just as the Saathi Support team had hoped for. 

Across the two activities, the team had the pleasure of engaging with over 562 students.

When peer support becomes part of the campus culture, it can create supportive environments for students to thrive. Saathi Support looks forward to continuing to build spaces for connection, support, and student-led wellbeing across Delhi-NCR campuses.