Jack.org
Jack.org
Jack.org, a Canadian charity focused on equipping youth with the resources, information and skills to support themselves or their peers through mental health challenges, is now expanding its reach into visible minorities and underserved newcomers by adapting its programming.
Through its ground-breaking work centred around youth aged 13 to 24 co-designing solutions and delivering programs, Jack.org is now active across Canada.
"Any young person, grade nine and up are actually in a period of transition," President and CEO Rowena Pinto explained, adding how the youth are on the frontlines of the mental health crisis.
"This is when they are often starting to spend more time away from their family unit and regular trusted adults, and spending more time with their peers, work colleagues or with university friends. But because they were moving away from those supportive networks, their peers are often the first people to actually notice if there is a mental health struggle."
Jack.org (formerly known as Jack Project) was founded by Sandra Hanington and Eric Windeler in 2010 after they lost their son to suicide. The charity aims to empower young people to deal with mental health struggles so that they get support at the right time and avoid escalation to the point of crisis.
For reaching populations who may have a lot of intergenerational stigma or don't have a visible representation, the charity is now relying on partnerships with other community-building organizations to bring more young people from these communities into the conversation and co-design an approach to programming and delivery.
Jack talks, the speaker series, which is delivered by young people with lived mental health experience, now has an Indigenous Health Program to target Indigenous youth in underserved newcomers. In this adapted program, young Indigenous speakers use indigenous practices and traditional teachings about mental health to educate youth.
Similarly, the charity just finished tweaking its digital program resource, Be There Certificate, so that young people from underserved communities can create storytelling guides where they can see their stories and identify themselves with the content.
The free resource, which can be used by anyone, including adults, to increase mental health literacy and gain the skills needed to support anyone with mental health struggles, is quite popular.
"In over a period of two hours, a young person or an adult can learn how to talk to a young person about their mental health in a way that they feel supported. And the person who is providing support also is able to keep themselves safe in the conversations," Pinto highlighted.
According to the charity, mental health crises among youth existed even before the pandemic.
"Young people between the ages of 15 and 24 were most likely to report problems with their mental health and substance abuse, and suicide was the leading cause of death amongst this age group, second only to accidents. The pandemic just made things a lot worse," Pinto explained.
Drawing from her experience, Pinto confirmed that young people already have good mental health knowledge these days, aren't shy about talking about their mental health and are quite educated compared to young people who used to approach them a decade ago.
However, the charity is now gearing towards outreach and closing the gaps between its programming and visible minorities.
