This April during the build up to Mayor’s Health Week 2016 we are inviting preschools, schools and community
groups to take part in #kindwaterford put together a project, in any medium, showing how kindness can improve our mental health and wellbeing and how we can be kind to ourselves and others in our communities.
Our health and well-being is nurtured where we live, where we go to school and where we work. This project aims to ‘raise the energy’ of Waterford by focusing on the benefits of kindness – where people treat each other with empathy and kindness. We hope that by exploring what kindness means to us in Waterford we will increase levels of emotional resilience in our communities, reduce isolation, anxiety, lonliness, exclusion and the stigma attached to mental health issues.
#kindwaterford Outcomes
| Preschool | – Develop empathy skills
– Promote kindness to selves and others and friendship – Reduce feelings of isolation, loneliness and anxiety |
| Primary School | – Anti-bullying awareness
– Reduce anxiety for young people – Develop empathy skills – Promote kindness and friendship – Reduce feelings of isolation, loneliness and anxiety |
| Secondary School | – Promote empathy and understanding among peer groups
– Promote emotional resilience – Reduction in anxiety |
| Community Groups | – Reduce isolation/loneliness in the community
– Buddy bench is a physical reminder to the community to connect with each other, talk to each other |
How can my school or community take part?
- Register your intention to enter with Kate Moloney, Healthy Waterford Coordinator on kmoloney@waterfordcouncil.ie
- Tell us about your progress on facebook and twitter using the hashtag #kindwaterford and keep us up to date on your progress
- Follow us on Facebook + Twitter
You are invited to submit an individual or group project based on this question:
What does kindness mean to you in Waterford?
You could:
- Draw picture,take a photograph
- Make a short film
- Perform a roleplay and film it
- Write a story or poem about kindness
- Interview your friends, neighbours and people in your community find out what kindness means to them
- Compile an all-school project to show all of the ways you encourage kindness
Be innovative, be exciting, be creative!
One entry per school or community group. Closing date for completed entries is Friday 29th April and winners will be announced during Mayor’s Health Week 7th – 14th May 2016. Entries will be publically displayed.