Mental health project for schools
Ways to Wellbeing aims to help your students learn about mental health and wellbeing from older people in your area.
This is an opportunity to bring communities together. Through heart-warming conversations, young and old generations can build connections and learn from each other.
Older adults in your community have a wealth of knowledge and important life lessons, gained from many different experiences through the years. Many older people are happy to share what they have learned about wellbeing through these experiences, and your students could also teach them what they know about minding their mental health.
How Ways to Wellbeing works
Ways to Wellbeing starts with students deciding on what kind of creative project they’d like to put together to showcase what they learn from the older people they link up with. This could be a podcast, video, photo project, or written story.
Students then connect with older people in their community. This might be talking to older family members, meeting people living in nursing homes, or writing letters to people in day centres. They ask questions about what the older people have learned through their lives, such as:
- Tips for living a mentally healthy life
- How to build resilience
- An important lesson that made a positive difference to their life.
Students make recordings, gather photos, take footage and collect anything they need to put their projects together. After students complete their projects, we invite their teachers to upload them to our School Portal, where other schools and teachers can see and share them.
We provide Student Steps and a Teacher Guide so that both teachers and students have all the information they need to get involved with the campaign.
Project history
Ways to Wellbeing went nationwide in 2022, having started as a pilot project in the previous year. In 2021, we partnered with Smart D8 and launched Ways to Wellbeing on a pilot basis with schools in the Dublin 8 area. Younger and older populations of Dublin 8 were brought together for meaningful conversations and insights from one another. Students produced projects using a wide range of styles and mediums, from photos and films to written stories, podcasts, and more. All projects were uploaded to our School Portal, with an exhibition showcasing some projects displayed in an exhibition and digital display in St Patrick's University Hospital in Dublin 8 in February 2022.
You can look back on the Ways to Wellbeing pilot project here.
Getting involved
If you would like to take part in Ways to Wellbeing, simply download our Student Steps and Teacher Guide to get started. These have all the information you need to begin.
You can also watch a short series from Smart D8 on how to create projects in different formats, like videos or podcasts: see the project tips here.
You can also get in touch with us with any questions you have by emailing info@walkinmyshoes.ie.
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