Coffee and conversation
Coffee and conversation starters is the focus of a health and wellbeing group’s campaign to encourage Ararat residents to start thinking about positive mental-health strategies.
Takeaway coffee cups at cafés across Ararat Rural City will be branded with positive mental-health messages as part of Resilient Ararat’s #beanresilient campaign, starting today.
In support of mental health, the group has supplied cafés throughout the city with specially branded takeaway cups.
The designs encourage the community to think about the three principles of resilience – gratitude, empathy and mindfulness – and how they contribute to positive mental health.
Project officer Jane Moriarty said the three principles, referred to as GEM, were a key talking point when the Melbourne-based Resilience Project visited the town earlier this year.
“The purpose of this is to get the community thinking about GEM and sharing their thoughts and ideas on how they can lead happier, more fulfilling lives,” she said.
“Eleven of our local schools have implemented the resilience projects curriculum, so we enlisted the help of a group of students to develop the messages for the cups.
“They were very keen to share the messages of GEM with the wider community as they have first-hand experience with how gratitude, empathy and mindfulness can have a positive impact on our mental health and outlook on life.”
Ms Moriarty said the cups included a question to get people thinking.
“We have also included a blank space on the cups and are encouraging people to fill in this space with their answer to the question and post a photo to social media with the hashtag, #beanresilient,” she said.
“We have put a lot of work into this campaign and we would really love to see the community embrace it by flooding social media with photos of themselves with their cups.”
To complement the campaign, Resilient Ararat has supplied cafés with support services cards which outline different organisations people can contact if they need help to improve their mental wellbeing. The #beanresilient campaign will run across Ararat from today until October 21.