What is the Grow Your Mind Project?
Grow Your Mind provides innovative and engaging wellbeing strategies for educators, children, and families. This project builds resilience and supports respectful relationships and consent education, and it is available as a quality-assured program in the NSW Department of Education’s Student Wellbeing external programs catalogue. Using neuroscience and storytelling, Grow Your Mind creates engaging mental health strategies that enhance the social and emotional wellbeing of children, educators, and families. The initiative truly mixes evidence-based approaches with creative, narrative-driven techniques that help spark a real conversation about mental health and positive education… it has an energy that feels both modern and profoundly caring.
Main Benefits for Wellbeing
Key facts and figures highlight the impact of this project:
- 14% of young people met the criteria for a mental disorder diagnosis, informing support strategies.
- One fifth of young people experienced high or very high levels of psychological distress, as reported by Beyond Blue.
- Australian students are more anxious about schoolwork than the OECD average, with females, indigenous students, and those from low socio-economic backgrounds experiencing the highest levels of stress.
- The project emphasizes that prevention is easier than cure, a core belief of its co-founders, Alice Peel and Kristina Freeman.
- With a BCorp score of 107.9, the project emphasizes high standards in social and environmental performance.
Innovative School Program
The Grow Your Mind School Program is evidence-based, time-flexible, and curriculum-aligned, making it perfect for use by individual teachers or entire schools. This program is designed to integrate seamlessly into existing lesson plans, ensuring that wellbeing topics are not an afterthought but a meaningful part of everyday learning. Its design draws from both research and creative storytelling to address issues of mental health awareness, emotional wellbeing, and mindfulness. Educators often remark that the approach is refreshingly dynamic and practical — a genuine shift from traditional methods.
Expanding Professional Development
Complementing the school program, the project offers a range of accredited online and on-demand PD courses as well as facilitated workshops designed and delivered by wellbeing experts. These courses allow educators to continually learn and grow, enhancing their capacity to support children’s mental health in real time. The professional development initiatives underscore positive psychology for kids and positive education practices. It feels like a breath of fresh air… a way to combine professional growth with a deep commitment to emotional wellbeing.
Engaging Resources & Podcast
The initiative also provides a rich array of physical and digital resources. School kits, posters, journals, and additional tools make wellbeing visible, engaging, and playful in the classroom. Alongside these, there is a free podcast hosted by kids for kids, featuring storytelling, interviews with adult experts, and humour. This unique format increases children’s understanding of mental health while equipping them with resilience strategies. The podcast bridges the gap between age-specific language and critical mental health topics, encouraging dialogue in a manner that feels both accessible and entertaining.
Project Impact on Global SDGs
- SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing
- SDG 4: Quality Education
- SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
Looking Forward to a Mentally Fit Future
At its heart, Grow Your Mind is a resourceful and holistic project that champions the importance of mental health and emotional wellbeing. The co-founders, Alice Peel and Kristina Freeman, bring their extensive backgrounds—one in teaching and the other in health practice—to create an approachable, evidence-based programme that tackles modern challenges. They believe that mental health is not just about the absence or presence of a diagnosable condition, but also about nurturing an environment where positive psychology for kids, mindfulness, compassion, and positive education are at the forefront. This project takes a proactive stance on mental health by focusing on prevention, inspiring educators and families to adopt strategies that build and sustain resilience.
The program’s integration into the NSW Department of Education’s catalogue reflects its commitment to quality and measurable impact. By using a mix of neuroscience and storytelling, it ensures that its message is both scientifically sound and deeply relatable. With innovative school programs, comprehensive professional development courses, and engaging resources like the kids’ podcast, Grow Your Mind creatively addresses the rising concerns around psychological distress among young Australians. The project not only educates but also serves as a model for how future initiatives can combine rigor with creativity, solid research with accessible content, and compassion with efficacy… ultimately paving the way for a society that values and actively supports mental fitness.
