Schools’ wellbeing project in operation
Whangarei’s Manaia View School Raumanga helped launch what will be a two-year Mental Wellbeing Project for Northland Primary Schools.
The Rotary Te Tai Tokerau Tamariki Mental Wellbeing Project comes with a $600,000 Global Grant.
The project’s purpose is to support teachers and provide them with the necessary resources and training to address the rise of child and young person mental illness.
Leading this project is Cat Levine, Founder of Think and Be Me, an organisation created in response to the growing rate of mental health issues among youth and provides children with the means to manage anxiety early in their early years.
Levine and her team of experts and volunteers will train 450 teachers in over 60 Northland primary schools over the course of two years and will visit each school three times delivering educational mental health presentations, resources and fun activities for the children.
The programme uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy principles, which helps individuals develop resilience and coping skills.
Think and Be Me was set up in response to the rise of child and young people’s mental illness where Cat saw the need for children to be educated early on in their lives to ensure they had the abilities to manage anxiety before it became a problem later on.
‘‘Discussions with teachers and principals reveal they are not adequately equipped to deal with some of the mental health challenges that are becoming more prevalent in the classroom environment today’’, Levine says.
In addition, Think and Be Me locally produced engaging videos starring Cool Cat, Worry Watch Dog and Angry Dragon. The videos are designed to help children to recognise, understand and appropriately manage their emotions.