2018 Day of the Seafarer – and what it means to #OSM
June 25th marks the eighth year of the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Day of the Seafarer. This year’s theme: #SupportSeafarersWellbeing, a topic geared towards addressing seafarer’s wellbeing, particularly their mental health.
As the shipping industry leads into celebrating the International Day of the Seafarer to recognize over one million seafarers that operate the global fleet, OSM too wishes to celebrate the men and women that serve on our fleet around the globe.
In line with this year’s important topic, and as a part of our lead HSEQ initiatives, we will be implementing a global Mental Health Awareness campaign for our Seafarers.
Through this campaign we will raise awareness amongst our seafarers on how to recognize symptoms of and prevent stress, deal with depression and the many other challenges on board that can impact their mental health. We will also use this campaign to increase awareness of the support services that are available to seafarers to support them in this regard – such as the contact details of organizations who can assist them confidentially in dealing with mental health related problems.
Treating our seafarers with the upmost respect has been ingrained in OSM’s values since our inception. We are so proud to work with our network of seafarers across a strong fleet who take great pride in their roles, who act as our ambassadors around the globe and who uphold the ‘OSM Standard’ every day, which means exhibiting our core values of being teambuilders, friendly, responsible and always on in everything they do.
As we continue to grow, we understand that maintaining the personal, hands-on relationship with all our ships and seastaff will become more challenging. However, our commitment to supporting our seafarers and upholding high standards of crew welfare is something that will always reside at the heart of OSM’s values.
So, as we head into the month of June, and we embark on IMO’s upcoming Day of the Seafarer, we would like to say a heartfelt ‘thank you’, not just to all seafarers of OSM, but to everyone in the worldwide seafaring community.