Hello everyone,
I’ve really been having so much fun visiting all our groups across the province virtually, and sharing with all of you my experience! I’ve heard from many youth and adult allies that they have been inspired by the awesome projects our groups are working on.
Last week I had the chance to visit another incredible TNM group in Brantford with our partner agency Woodview Mental Health & Autism Services! Before the pandemic, I was eager to meet this group in person and was so happy to have the chance to visit their group virtually. It was also their first time meeting one of their new adult allies who was joining the group!
We began the meeting with a great check in question, check in questions are a great facilitation technique as they help to ground us and see how folks are doing and adjusting the way we facilitate accordingly. The question asked was “what is your brag/drag?” My brag was definitely getting to meet the group, as I had been eagerly waiting all week! From the check ins, I learned that I definitely need to start watching WandaVision, and that there are so many new Pokémon that I had no idea about…..I wish I had the chance to quickly go grab my Pokémon card collection from 17 years ago….
After checking in, we heard updates from the adult allies and it was so nice to see that the group encourages and promotes events happening in other New Mentality groups. In the updates they shared that our New Mentality group with The Maltby Centre in Kingston will be hosting a Men’s Mental Health event! I really appreciated this, as it furthered showcased how amazing and supportive our network is of one another.
After the updates, I came to know of the many projects our group is working on, from creating social media content, to hosting a talent not required show for Children’s Mental Health Week, working on a podcast, creating a brochure for adult allies to know how to best support youth and so much more, that I don’t even think I can capture in one blog!
The group spent time discussing each of their projects, but their main focus was on reviewing a draft version of their brochure. I really appreciated how youth were supporting one another through the conversations on how to better present the brochure. I was incredibly impressed by the youth who created the brochure using Canva, and I’m starting to notice a pattern of all the awesome Canva and PowerPoint stars we have in our network. Definitely giving up the Canva Crown to all the amazing youth in our network.
After working for a bit, we spent the end of the meeting playing a game of Psych! If you haven’t heard of this game you have to play it, it’s so funny and the responses that the youth came up with during the game were so creative and hilarious!
I’m so happy I got the chance to meet these brilliant changemakers that make up our network, and can’t wait to visit them again… and hopefully try out our lip syncing Brady Bunch style Zoom show!
See you all soon on zoom,
Fizza Abbas, Network Coordinator
