Befrienders Worldwide
organization
Befrienders Worldwide is a charity that helps people who are considering suicide or experiencing general emotional distress. They have 349 emotional support centres in 32 countries, reaching an estimated 7 million people each year. Volunteers listen without judging people or telling them what to do, and can be contacted by phone, email, SMS, internet chat or in person, dependent on location.
As Befrienders Worldwide evolved from the Samaritans in the UK, some of its centres use the name Samaritans, while others use Befrienders or similar. The primary aim of all centres is to relieve distress and thus reduce the number of deaths by suicide. They recognise "the importance of being listened to, in confidence, anonymously, and without prejudice" and "value that a person has the fundamental decision about their own life." They have no political, religious or sectarian affiliations and the beliefs of volunteers are not imposed onto callers. Experienced volunteers select, train and supervise other volunteers; individual member centres also support each other and share information.
Besides a list of national organisations where people can find help in their own countries, the Befrienders Website has general information about depression, suicide warning signs, and other topics.
“Befrienders Worldwide” enters the record as organization. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Befrienders, Worldwide and organization can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4880382.
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This entry incorporates text from “Befrienders Worldwide” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.