MIND-CRAFT
Building resilience in kids.
Mind-Craft is a 6-week innovative social and emotional learning program designed to help children in Year 7 put together a collection of anxiety management skills and coping strategies that will build their confidence and self-mastery so that they can improve and strengthen the emotional structure of their lives. It is in keeping with our early intervention and prevention approach with a strong focus on building resilience through effective and engaging child-centred activities. Mind-Craft is run as a closed group (max. 8 children), so the same children work together each week, which is great for building trust, sharing new insights and supporting each other.
This course is the result of a true collaboration between a group of passionate community members: Genevieve Morrissey (B.A. Counselling), Joanne Edmond (B.A. Psychology, P.G. Dip Psychology, MAPS), Karen Crutchlow (B.A. (Hons) Professional and Continuing Education, PGCE – Postgraduate Certificate in Education), Jeff Higgins (Dip Graphic Design) and Joanne James (M.A. (Hons) Modern Languages, M.A. Applied Translation Studies).
Genevieve’s dream of creating a junior version of our adult program Hello To Me was matched by Joanne Edmond’s desire to develop a skills-based psycho-educational resilience building program for young people in this region. This blended with the wisdom of Karen Crutchlow’s 25 years in the child education field, the wonderful creativity of Jeff Higgins and the editing skills of Joanne James.
We ran the first pilot over 6 weeks in May/June 2022 in Busselton, then extended it by one week and ran it again it Dunsborough with Joanne Edmond & Karen Crutchlow as the facilitators. We are so grateful to the parents and guardians who took a leap of faith by enrolling their children in a brand-new program! It was hugely beneficial for us to put everything into practice, to see what worked well and where improvements could be made. We then used all these insights to adapt the program where necessary. Looking to the future, the PWP will be developing Mind-Craft into a teachable course that will be available for other interested parties to use in our community as a wonderful resilience building tool for our kids.