Rob Prior.

Rob Prior is a lived-experience mental health advocate and the founder of Sidekick Initiative.

Rob won the New Volunteer Award on 6 October 2026, seven months into the current chapter of Sidekick Initiative. His children were there to see him win. Read the award news.

Rob's route into this work started with a life that broke and got rebuilt. Lived experience of prison, years of mental health struggle, PTSD and CPTSD, trauma, and the long, unglamorous work of rebuilding.

He has worked on the frontline of recovery services as a peer mentor, and has trained across education, mentoring, fitness, coaching and public speaking. Sidekick Initiative is what that experience turned into: a way of showing up for other people the way he once needed someone to show up for him.

Rob is a lived-experience mental-health advocate and a trained recovery mentor. He is not a clinician and he is not a therapist. He works alongside them, doing the bit they cannot always do: showing up as someone who has been there.

The framework that runs through everything Rob delivers is the Sidekick Operational System: Aim, Intention, Method.

Rob also runs his own endurance, speaking and mentoring work under his personal brand. Find that at RobPriorUK.com. Sidekick Initiative is the community organisation; RobPriorUK is Rob's individual commercial work.