Helping to support this year’s Children’s Mental Health Week, from 1st–7th February, Molly Rose Foundation (MRF) volunteers have already distributed nearly all of our popular new ‘My Bag of Happiness’ boxed packs for primary school pupils who are currently attending school, as well as those studying at home.
Following their runaway success among pupils, teachers and parents alike, further supplies of these free-of-charge resources are being ordered and MRF is also planning changes to the packs’ contents, designed to appeal to different age groups, so they can similarly benefit in future too.
The theme of this year’s Children’s Mental Health Week – first launched by children’s mental health charity Place2Be in 2015 – was Express Yourself: finding ways to share feelings, thoughts, or ideas, through creativity, such as through art, music, writing and poetry, dance and drama, photography and film, and doing activities that make you feel good.
Making our own contribution towards this important initiative, MRF included a self-explanatory guide with suggestions on how to use the contents supplied within each of the first 500 ‘My bag of Happiness’ boxed packs. These consisted of an attractive purple organza bag containing an MRF-branded pencil together with a ‘luggage’ label and string, a sheet of different coloured smiley-face stickers, a pack of post-it notes, a silicone MRF bracelet and a handful of our popular credit card-sized Help Cards. To learn more about our help Cards Click Here
Children write down their happy memories and thoughts on a Post-it Note and then place it in their bag. If ever a child feels sad or anxious, they can go to their bag and remember their happy feelings. The feedback from schools has been amazing, with the children really enjoying this activity – here’s a selection of the comments we’ve received so far:
Pupils
- “I love the bag, it makes me think of the happy times. I want them again.” Alice, aged 5
- “The stickers make me smile. I had lots of happy things to draw.” Robert, aged 5
- ” I want to write about lots of things and show it to my Mum.” Emily, aged 7
- ” Can we keep these? I really want to as it’s made me feel happy today.” Jessica, aged 8
- ” I’m going to draw my own stickers and wear the band, it’s cool.” Jake, aged 10
- “The pencil is good as it’s got a rubber on the end and you can phone the numbers on the card if you are feeling worried and sad.” Scarlett, aged 10
Parents
- “Thank you for the bag. It was a great talking point over dinner last night”.
- “I didn’t realise how much she was missing during lockdown. I now know what makes her happy and how sad she’s been.”
- ” A great resource with useful contact numbers, thank you.”
- “He wouldn’t take the bracelet off, I was surprised. An important message, thank you.”
If you’re struggling just text MRF to 85258 so you can speak to a trained volunteer from Shout, the UK’s Crisis Text Line service
