mindyourmindpro.ca

Accomplishments of mindyourmind creators of mindyourmindpro.ca

Many of you have been asking what we've been up to at mindyourmind and mindyourmindpro in 2009/2010. Thanks for asking and here are some highlights!

• After a 9 week closure late last spring, the entire staff returned to take on the challenge of completing a program evaluation. The process was a revelation and the results, exciting! Thanks again to the Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health for their guidance and support through this process. We are eager to share our findings. More on that in the next couple of weeks!
• Youth have been asking for changes to the website! mindyourmind.ca has delivered! The website has been redesigned and will be including more interactive Web 2.0 technology features in the upcoming year
• In the past year mindyourmind.ca has received visitors from over 197 countries with a concentration of our Canadian visitors coming from Ontario. mindyourmind and its various broad-casting channels were accessed over 1 million times in 2009
• mindyourmindpro.ca beta site was launched in March 2009. The site offers health care professionals, service providers and educators web-based tools and resources to use with the youth they work with. Last year there were approximately 200 registered users of the site. Most viewed sections were the Pro Blog and the Coping and Crisis tools
• mindyourmind with the help of The Ontario Trillium Foundation developed Media For Change, an online social marketing tool, for youth, service providers and educators that outlines our stigma reduction, mental health promotion program. Will officially launch late spring!
• We are working with Mobilizing Minds, a 5 year Knowledge Mobilization research project with the following partners University of Manitoba, York University, Brock University, McMaster University and Brandon University. mindyourmind is the youth engagement facilitator for the project which gives us the opportunity to work with an amazing group of young adults from all across the country and inform youth engagement processes
• In partnership with the University of Western Ontario and Fanshawe College Nursing school, mindyourmind supported the clinical placement of six Nursing Students

VOLUNTEER ACCOMPLISHMENTS

mindyourmind and youth volunteers created psycho-educational tools for youth organizations

• Sexual health promotion tool Adventures in Sex City, created for Middlesex London Health Unit (MLHU), made international headlines, including coverage in the Globe & Mail, countless gaming websites and popular celebrity blogger's website, Perezhilton.com. MLHU's website traffic increased from 900 hits a day to 45,000+, as a result
• No Signal, a bullying awareness game created for Kids Help Phone, will be launched on their new website in April.
• Three youth volunteer teams, including the mindyourmind 2009/2010 Street Team, contributed over 1000 volunteer hours in 2009/2010. This does not include the huge time commitment made by youth who submit content to the website, such as Jenna, 18, who shared the unique and helpful way she uses our calendars as mood trackers.
• The mindyourmind 2009/2010 Street Team helped to facilitate and provide a strong youth presence at the South West Regional Conference 2009-2010: Mental health and addictions in children and youth, a conference organized by The Provincial Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental health at CHEO and the Ministry of Children and Youth Services.

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

• mindyourmind talks to former NHL player Theo Fleury in this 5 part video interview about being sexually abused by coach Graham James, coping with drugs, alcohol, and gambling for many years, and ultimately deciding to heal and change his life around. View interview here
• Writer Kate Le Page, talks about her battle with, and overcoming, anorexia nervosa, in this interview and personal story submissions coming soon to our Personal Stories section
• Terry, the mother of a son with schizophrenia, interviews Beatrice Weatherly, author of A Gift of Grace: A Mothers Journey Through Her Son's Schizophrenia, about her own experience as the parent of a child with this mental illness. Read the interview here

PREVIOUS HIGHLIGHTS

• 2009 Health and Science Communications Association, Media Festival Awards: The Holly Harrington-Lux Creative Design Award went to Maria Luisa Contursi and mindyourmind, and Kara Connors & Arlyn Bonfield, co-producers for Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire for the website nosmokingroom.org
• 2009 Media Festival Awards, Silver Winner, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center for website No Smoking Room
• Since the website launched in March of 2005 a yearly average of 1000 hours has been contributed tomindyourmind by youth volunteers. Youth also contribute innumerable hours through spontaneous submissions of creative materials
• 2008 & 2006 finalists at the Stockholm Challenge in Stockholm, Sweden. Diploma awarded for "Excellence in the use of information technology" in the Health category
• 2008 Champion of Mental Health award from St. Joseph's Health Care, London Ontario and the Canadian Mental Health Association, London Middlesex branch
• 2008 Canadian Mental Health Association's National Media Award, honouring "Outstanding blend of knowledge and technology promoting mental health issues in Canada"
• 25th Anniversary Great Grant Award in 2007 by The Ontario Trillium Foundation for "Best grant recipient" in the past 25 years
• 2007 themindyourmind Street Team's Anti-Stigma campaign was acknowledged by the United Nations Youth division and noted in their newsletter distributed to over 5,000 subscribers worldwide
• 2005 Pillar Voluntary Sector Network, Innovation in Administration award
• To promote financial vibrancy mindyourmind has struck fee-for-service partnerships with local, national and international agencies and organizations creating youth engagement websites or web-based tools and to deliver mental health promotion programs
• Presence on relevant youth culture and social networking sites such as Myspace, Youtube, Facebookand Twitter
• mindyourmind and mindyourmindpro.ca creates multi-sector relationships with Sponsors and Friends and responds to a wide range of requests for collaboration, all with the goal of promoting positive youth mental health, and supporting youth who want to help other youth
• Website visitors from over 190 countries