Snap-Pey Pals comic book is the creation of Kayla Tavares. Kayla saw the need for a way to help educate students in younger grades about how to peacefully resolve conflict. The comic book is about a group of friends who all go to the same school. One of them gets a top as a present from their grandfather. This top takes them back in time so that they can resolve all their conflicts in a peaceful manner.

This project was a huge success. The comic book was distributed to local schools and was adapted into a play that was presented to over 1500 students. Kayla was asked to make a presentation to the Waterloo Region Catholic School Board’s Family Life Advisory Committee and the feedback she received was very positive. Kayla has recently applied for another Dare to Dream grant so that she can continue to promote Snap-Pey Pals comic books and make presentations on peaceful conflict resolution to schools in her community.

Camille Smart’s talent show “Live It!” was performed with help from Nexus Youth Services. This event was developed to inform other youth about mental health and mental illness. Live It! also gave youth a chance to showcase their talents to their community. During the performance, a motivational speaker who lives with Tourette’s Syndrome delivered a presentation that highlighted the difficulties of living with mental illness.

Over 80 people attended the show and a post-show survey found an overwhelming majority of audience members saying they had learned something new about mental illness. Even better, 100% of the people surveyed said they left Live it! with a new and positive view about mental health! Informing people about mental health and illness is what Dare to Dream is all about.

Ben Lowy was doing a co-op term at Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation when he came up with his idea for a Dare to Dream project. Ben's idea was to conduct a survey in four different schools in the Toronto District School Board on how much high school students know about mental health. Ben wrote and conducted the survey and has compiled the results.

Once Ben has completed putting together the survey results, he is hoping to have his findings published in the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation's newsletter. Ben is also hoping to get his results to the Toronto District School Board and to the four schools where the surveys were conducted. He hopes that his survey will help schools develop more meaningful mental health education programs.

In Kitchener, a team of students and teachers from St. Anne’s Separate School and K-W Counselling Services wrote, prepared and presented Feelings Juice: Drama & Song. Students first received S.T.E.A.M. training, (Supporting Temper Emotions and Anger Management) which focuses on how to best handle different emotions in different situations. The group took what they learned from this training and turned it into a play. After months of preparation the S.T.E.A.M. team presented to their first school and it was a huge hit!

They ended up presenting nine times to schools around the region, for K-W Counselling, and on Rogers television. The group was asked to present at additional schools but had to limit their performances because of their own school commitments. To solve this problem, they created a video of their presentation and made it available to any school that wanted to present it. In total, Feelings Juice: Drama & Song has been presented to over 1700 students and teachers and been seen by many more through TV and DVD presentations.

Patricia Mirka, a student at Chelmsford Valley District Composite School, noticed that students at her school who were stressed had no healthy outlets for their feelings. She decided the solution was to create a relaxing room.

With the help of her mentor, Marisa Costanzo, Patricia presented her idea to the school’s administration, which promised her a room. She then applied for Dare to Dream funding to turn that room into a safe, relaxing, positive environment where students could go to chill out. To date, the relaxing room has been filled with new furniture, a foosball table, plants, positive message posters and mental health information.

The school even held a ribbon-cutting ceremony where all the students were invited to use the room at lunch. The room has also provided a venue for presentations by the Sudbury and District Health unit, foosball tournaments and skateboarding demos. All this helps make Patricia’s school more mentally healthy and stress-free.

Dunnville Secondary School is a rural school of about 650 students in Haldimand County Its Suicide Intervention Team wanted to develop a grassroots student base for suicide awareness and prevention. Students lead the planning and carried out a project to destigmatize depression and talk about suicide. It has had a remarkable effect throughout the school.

The team’s signature t-shirts create a sea of yellow helpers when worn on Fridays; slogans and promotional materials are posted throughout the school; risk-assessment surveys conducted by the students went out to the student body; students visited classrooms to get their message across.

The Dunnville Secondary School suicide intervention team has recently applied for another Dare to Dream grant. They want to continue and expand their program and provide A.S.I.S.T. training to members of their community outside of the school. We are looking forward to seeing what the future has in store for the suicide intervention team!

Kathleena Tattrie had an idea to hold a leadership development day for Peterborough youth. Students ages 10-21 from all local schools, youth from the Bridge Youth Centre, and youth from the Youth Emergency Shelter were invited. Youth who attended got the chance to be part of some fun interactive games that helped them learn about mental health. They also got the chance to listen to three different speakers.

The first was a man who suffers from schizophrenia. He helped the youth understand what it was like to have a mental illness and how people treated him differently because of it.

The youth also got the chance to listen to a person whose mother suffers from schizophrenia. She talked about the difficulties of having a parent who suffers from a mental illness and how her life was affected because of it.

The last guest speaker was an athlete who talked about how you need to be mentally healthy to compete in triathlons and how sports like triathlons test you mentally.

After the leadership development day, the youth went home with a greater appreciation about mental health and living with mental illness.

After receiving counselling for her mental health difficulties, Lee Martin believed that she needed to share her story with other youth in her community. Lee created a presentation based on her own experiences to show other youth who may have mental health problems that counselling does work.

To help raise more awareness about mental health issues, Lee also created t-shirts with “Stop the Silence” logos on them. The t-shirts are available at the end of Lee’s presentations and proceeds are being used to raise funds for a local mental health agency. Lee continues to make presentations at schools in and around her community.