To Lead from the Heart
Curason pa Curason
Curason pa Curason (Heart to Heart) is a project that promotes the mental resilience of youth and young adults by including them in the normalization of conversations around mental health on Aruba.
Project years:
Year 1: August 2021 - July 2022
Year 2: June 2023 - May 2024
Year 1
Curason pa Curason consisted of different activities that engaged youth in conversations and solution-based processes, provide tools for healthy coping mechanisms, and build resilience on the topic of mental health.
The project included two main objectives:
1. engage youth at schools in conversations around the topic of mental health
2. recruit, select and traing 15 young adult volunteers who assist youth during the activities as peer coaches (Heart-Centered Impact Coaches).
We worked with 4 schools during the project, reaching a total of 225 students with the following activities:
Activities for students:
Impact Your Life: informative sessions that introduces students to the topic of what is mental resilience. A total of 7 third year classes received information on what is mental resilience and they can build their own mental resilience.
Impact Café: Youth Mental Health. Impact Café is an interactive dialogue exchange sessions where youth share their experiences and solutions as to what can support their mental health. 10 sessions were given to 10 classes.
Impact Factory: An interactive brainstorm session with a group of students from each school with the purpose of working on a video campaign to raise awareness on mental resilience. A total of 7 sessions with a total of 22 students participating were given. Click here to view awareness videos created by students.
Heart to Heart Talk: a session that focuses on effective communication using caring language by creating a safe space to share. One (1) session was given to a group of 6 students.
Training Trajectory Heart-Centered Impact Coaches
A total of 15 young adults followed a training course to assist during our activities as Heart-Centered Impact Coaches (HCICs). As HCICs, they were group leaders during our different workshops and sessions, guiding conversations and processes, engaging youth to participate fully, and helping create a safe space for sharing.
The HCICs followed 2 training workshops, 2 personal development workshops, and 8 evaluation sessions to support their skills development (for a total of 105 hours of training and coaching).
Furthermore, Heart-Centered Impact Coaches received capacity building and team building activities to support them during their introductory trajectory.
Year 1 at a glance:
Total amount of students reached: 225
Total amount of activities: 25
Project Schools:
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Abraham de Veer School
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Filomena College Mavo
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John Wesley College
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Colegio Nigel Matthew
Total amount of volunteer Heart-Centered Impact Coaches trained: 15
Total amount of skills trainings: 6
Evaluations and Results:
Evaluation Impact Café: Colegio Nigel Matthew students
Results research: The Impact of Mental Resilience Intervention
Report: Heart-Centered Impact Coaches
Year 2
After the success of the first year of Curason pa Curason, HCLF received approval for a second year of the project by Fonds 21.
With this continuation of Curason pa Curason, we aim to continue to foster mental resilience among youth by offering them the opportunity to develop practical tools to manage stressors and factors that negatively impact their mental resilience.
Objectives:
1. Recruit, select and train new Heart-Centered Impact Coaches who will support youth during Curason pa Curason as small group leaders (peer coaches).
2. Provide 350 new youth with the tools and healthy coping mechanisms to support positive mental health and mental resilience.
How are we going to do this?
1. Train a new group of Heart-Centered Impact Coaches to support youth during this project
2. Provide 16 workshops at schools where 320 youth will receive tools on how to better support their mental resilience
3. Provide 2 open workshops for at least 30 youth to receive tools on how to better support their mental resilience
4. Provide select youth at participating schools an additional session that aims to support effective communication and care in the classroom to create a supportive and trusting environment.
Project Timeline:
June 2023 - May 2024
Status:
On going