Project We Are by Ignite Wellness Programs

The Cause

Ignite Wellness Programs would like to offer twenty 8 week sessions of school and/or community programming that promotes resilience for children and youth ages 8-14 during the 2016/17 school year. As funding for this type of programming is often an issue, we would like to be able to offer the programs free of charge to interested schools and families.

Although activities and discussions would vary based on participant age, all programming for Project We Are would revolve around increasing self awareness, healthy relationship skills, resiliency, and developing critical thinking skills. Through art, group activities, and discussions, we would build connections and share experiences thereby building stronger, healthier communities within schools.

At the end of the 2016/17 school year, we would love to be able to bring together all group participants to share in a Project We Are Retreat. During this day long retreat, youth would interact with students from other schools while participating in wellness activities such as yoga and mindfulness, urban arts, and fitness. After a healthy lunch, we would pay it forward by doing various acts of kindness or volunteering to benefit other community initiatives.

We believe that by creating a safe space for children and youth to focus on developing socio-emotional skills, we empower and strengthen our youth to make healthier decisions for themselves throughout their lives. By focusing on topics that develop a healthy self awareness and critical thinking skills, we reduce the negative impact of gossip, peer pressure, unrealistic standards of beauty, and unattainable illusions of perfection. Although we can\'t control everything that happens to us in life, how people treat us, or what others say to us, we can control how we process these events and how we react to them.

Who Will it Benefit?

Not only the boys and girls ages 8-14 who participate in Project We Are programming will benefit, but also their schools and communities. By building connections, shared experiences, and resiliency, we can build stronger, healthier communities. Since our programming stresses gratefulness, kindness, and giving back to your community, program participants will be setting excellent examples for younger students and siblings.

Other community initiatives would also benefit from the Project We Are Retreat Day as part of the day would be spent doing kindness activities or paying it forward. To make this experience meaningful, students would be asked to submit their ideas for paying it forward when they register for the Retreat Day.

We always ask for feedback on the last day of a session. Here is some recent feedback we received after a Building Resiliency group:

-I learned what a healthy and unhealthy relationship is and to be myself.
-Leaning about photoshopping and learning about healthy and unhealthy relationships was meaningful to me.
-I would say this group is really fun and you talk about different things like being yourself and being kind and helping and you can share your stories.
-I learned a lot of things that helped me
-Drawing healthy and unhealthy relationship houses was meaningful to me.