Canberra is being called upon to help select our local heroes and provide community initiatives with a cash injection via the Westfield Local Heroes program. In the running at Westfield Belconnen is Mark Brosnan who has been nominated for his role as a volunteer with Mental Illness Education ACT (MIEACT).

Westfield shopping centres in Australia and New Zealand support community-focused initiatives through their Local Heroes program. This year, each winner will be awarded $20,000 for their nominated organisation while all finalists receive $5,000.

Providing mental health and wellbeing education through programs in community groups, schools and workplaces across Canberra, MIEACT partners with people with lived experience of mental illness. Their mission says the stories told by those who have lived experience help to promote early intervention, increase mental health literacy, reduce stigma and emphasise recovery.

Hearing about MIEACT through his role at a community radio station, Mr Brosnan felt that he was at a point in his own journey where he could speak on his experience, particularly if something he went through resonated with someone else and helped them on their own journey.

“I go in with another volunteer, there’s always two of us and I go in and I share my story. I speak for 15 to 20 minutes, just giving them an outline of what my story is, where I’ve come from, and where I am now,” says Mr Brosnan.

Surviving a knife attack in the workplace in 2006, his life changed in that moment. Working in a dangerous field with people with diminished capacity and negative behaviours, the attack was the final straw, and he remembers the moment his mind ‘broke’.

“My life, for all intents and purposes, ended,” he says. “I lost my career, I lost the financial benefits that come from working. I lost a lot of time with my children because they were very young … To say I lost everything would be an understatement.”

Knowing that something was wrong and that the world he knew had changed dramatically was a confronting experience. Mr Brosnan found a doctor who diagnosed him with Complex-PTSD and helped set him on the path to recovery.

Wanting to retake from mental illness some of the things it has stolen from his life, Mr Brosnan aims to help other people not make the same mistakes.

“I remember feeling that my life was purposeless,” he says. “When I was at my worst, I thought that I couldn’t have any hopes or dreams or have a positive impact in the world ever again. When I started to realise that mental illness wasn’t the destination, it was a blip on the road that I became bolder about talking to people about my experience.”

Surrounded by passionate people at MIEACT, Mr Brosnan says the Local Heroes nomination is hard to come to terms with as “it’s hard to feel extraordinary when everyone around you is extraordinary”.

“It’s lovely that people are looking at what I do and are able to say, ‘Hang on, that is something that’s important and it’s worthwhile’. That in itself is really wonderful.”

The thing he loves about the Local Heroes program is that the award wouldn’t go to him directly, it goes to the organisation and the goal they are trying to achieve.

“If we did get the $20,000 it would just help us speak to thousands more students because the demand far outweighs what we can deliver and what we’re doing is unique,” Mr Brosnan says.

Even if MEIACT doesn’t receive the award, their mission will continue. He says volunteering with the organisation is a privilege, knowing every day he gets the chance to try and save more lives.

Have your say in Westfield Local Heroes with voting open until 11 September; westfield.com.au/local-heroes