Shift.ms

Shift.ms

At a glance

Causes

  • Health and well being / research and care
  • Local / community
  • Physical disabilities
  • Young people

Other details

Geographical remit: 
International

Objectives

Shift.ms is the social network for people with multiple sclerosis (MSers). We exist because a diagnosis of MS is life changing. It strikes when you’re in your prime. 

Hearing from people like you helps you listen, adapt and take charge. MS doesn't mean giving up on your ambitions, just rethinking how to achieve them.

Our online peer support community provides a forum for conversations, a map of members that illustrates you are not alone, and stories and films that help MSers make sense of the world and the chaos a diagnosis can bring.
 
The Shift.ms service aims to impact people diagnosed with MS by:

  • Reducing isolation, anxiety and depression as soon as possible after diagnosis
  • Increasing ability to deal with diagnosis and adapt to life with MS
  • Developing knowledge and confidence to make positive choices about health, lifestyle and the future

Activities

Everything we deliver aims to be ‘By MSers, for MSers’, because involving the MS community at every level of what we do ensures we stay relevant and increases impact. We actively work to build our community because we trust in the positive impact of peer to peer support and believe in the value of information from experience. Our volunteer programme currently stands at 240 people, 85% of whom are MSers and members of www.Shift.ms. Our volunteers deliver some of our key services by sharing their skills and lived experience with the community, often with very little input from Shift.ms.

Our core service is our forum which provides a safe space for people to connect with each other, ask for tips, advice and guidance and generally feel less isolated. www.Shift.ms attracts 50,000 visitors a month. We have over 19,000 registered members with an average of 400 new members joining per month. In addition, we have a combined social media following of 40,000.

Alongside the forum, we produce community-led video content including narrative films which aim to raise awareness of the day to day impact of living with MS. We also regularly produce 'in the field' reports through our MS Reporters project where we trains community members to become citizen journalists. The video outputs lead to MSers taking control of the expert information they receive to manage their health. 

We are currently developing a one to one peer support network called the Buddy Network where those who are newly diagnosed can be connected with a more experienced MSer. This project is in early stages but we have big ambitions.

One of our key goals over the next 18 months is to increase the amount of newly diagnosed MSers we reach. We are doing this in a number of different ways but one of our key developments is to recreate our site in different languages.

No current opportunities

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