npm init permission denied

I'm currently doing an online course in coding and when following along the instructions I've run into a problem. while pushing the project to github i get this error when I run npm init

Error: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/user'
at Error (native)
TypeError: Cannot read property 'get' of undefined
at writeLogFile (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/utils/error-handler.js:205:32)
at exit (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/utils/error-handler.js:96:5)
at errorHandler (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/utils/error-handler.js:194:3)
at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js:76:20
at cb (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/npm.js:195:22)
at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/npm.js:233:24
at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/config/core.js:81:7
at Array.forEach (native)
at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/config/core.js:80:13
at f (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/once/once.js:25:25)

I'm quite new to all this so newbie explanation would be really appreciated =P

Thanks!!

via Callum Pullinger