Shawmind Updates

Shawmind is a charity on a mission to improve mental health awareness. After our 2017 parliamentary win towards compulsory mental health education in schools, we are committed to ‘headucating’ individuals and organisations so they understand mental health & emotional wellbeing, and how to manage them effectively to lead successful, fulfilled lives.  

With growing concern for young people’s mental health, with worrying statistics such as 1 in 6 children having mental health problems, and suicide being the third leading cause of death in 16-19 year olds, it is essential to educate children and their carers and provide early intervention to prevent mental illness.  

As a charity, we rely on donations and support so we can keep changing the lives of children, and provide them and their carers with mental health education. We aim to raise £20,000 Here’s how we use YOUR donations to support children’s mental health. 

We support educators, parents and carers to: 

• Not feel overwhelmed by Mental Health in the classroom 
• Not be the end point of dealing with Mental Health of pupils 
• Pay attention to the signs of mental health conditions and trauma in children 
• Provide early intervention and support through available tools and resources 
• Better educate children about mental and emotional health 

• Reduce stigma around mental health 
• Signpost children to appropriate mental health support when needed. 

This supports children to: 

• Better understand their emotions 
• Seek help when they are struggling mentally 

• Look after themselves when they need a mental health break  

How you can support us?

Do you want to support us so we can support a child’s mental health? For every £6 you donate, we can support a child for a year, and everyone £100 can provide THREE teachers with the resources they need.  

Are you a corporation looking to donate during the holiday season? For every £1500 you donate, we can support one school for SIX months! 

If you want to support us, here’s what you can do: 

• Donate – Learn about the different ways YOU can donate to support us. 

• Legacies – Leave a gift in your will towards a good cause. 
• Purchase one of our mental health training courses for yourself or your staff so you can have employees who specialise in mental health support.  

We often associate fundraising with organised events, sponsored challenges, and wide-scale donation collections, but we forget that there are lots of different ways to fundraise and help charities. Here is a list of 4 easy ways to fundraise that are simple, yet effective.

1. Legacy gift

Leaving a legacy gift to a charity in your Will allows you to help and support charities and keep their services running for years to come.

If you wish to leave a legacy gift to a charity in your Will, there are several ways you can do so:

• Leave a pecuniary gift

Donate a fixed sum of money to a charity in your Will. It is a good idea to review pecuniary gifts regularly as their value may be lessened by inflation.

• Leave a residuary gift

Leave a percentage of your estate to a charity. Unlike a pecuniary gift, your donation won’t lose value over time.

• Leave a specific gift

Donate specific assets to a charity in your Will such as personal possessions, property, or shares. Describe the item as accurately as possible to avoid any ambiguity.

Do you want to change lives by leaving a legacy gift to Shawmind in your Will? By doing so, you will be helping to fund our work improving the mental health of the next generation. In return we will cover the cost of drafting your standard Will.

2. Shop using Amazon Smile

Amazon Smile is a donation programme operated by Amazon that lets customers enjoy the same wide selection of products, low prices, and convenient shopping features as on Amazon. The difference is that when you shop on Amazon Smile, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the net purchase price (excluding VAT, returns and shipping fees) to the eligible charitable organisation of your choice – at no cost to you. Currently, Amazon Smile has donated £14.2 million to various charities. Just search for “Shawmind” on the Amazon Smile website to start donating to us with your next Amazon shop.

3. Donate using round-ups of your small change

You can support your favourite charity through small acts of kindness by donating pennies from your daily purchases – all through the safe and secure Pledjar mobile app. To donate to Shawmind using Pledjar, simply use the code SMF001 when setting the app up.

4. Volunteer your time

Volunteers are the backbone of charity organisations. Without volunteers providing frontline service, fundraising, events, publicity, and campaign efforts, many charities would be unable to cope.

Not only is volunteering incredibly valuable to charities, but it is also a fun and easy way to explore your interests and passions. Doing charity volunteer work that you find meaningful and interesting can be a relaxing, energising escape from your day-to-day routine of work, school, or family commitments. Volunteering also provides you with renewed creativity, motivation, and vision that can carry over into your personal and professional life.

At Shawmind, we are currently recruiting volunteers to help in our Breathe spaces in Nottinghamshire and our WhatsApp support. By becoming a Shawmind volunteer you will be supporting people in your community when they need it most. Shawmind relies on volunteers to be able to offer our local services, and therefore even a commitment of one hour a week can make a big difference. All our volunteers receive free mental health training and will receive a written reference if requested.

Our annual Sock it to Stigma! campaign seeks to raise awareness about the stigma associated with mental health and the damage that stigma can cause.

Mental ill health is all too often a topic that is not widely spoken about, especially in a workplace environment, with individuals fearing that they will be let go, not given as much responsibility or have their challenges ignored entirely by their colleagues and superiors. When mental ill health is not dealt with, it can have a hugely negative impact on productivity and work performance.

Stigma around mental health still prevents many people from seeking the help and support they need. We must all take personal responsibility to create the kind of culture which encourages people to speak up, which allows them to feel safe in doing so.

Peter Wingrove, Shawmind CEO

Each year we ask organisations and schools to get everyone wearing their brightest socks, on show, to create a fun discussion point around which to rally about this serious subject. This year’s campaign will run throughout February.

The intended outcome of #SockItToStigma is to combat stigma within schools as both workplaces and places of learning, to stimulate or increase discussions around mental health, encouraging free and open conversations between teachers and students, and between teachers and colleagues about their mental health and wellbeing without judgement or fear of recrimination.

By taking part in #SockItToStigma, you are showing that you are not afraid to stand up and be counted when it comes to fighting stigma surrounding mental health, and that your students and colleagues can come to you for support and advice, and be taken seriously without judgement or repercussion. #SockItToStigma has proven to be a fun, interactive way of getting conversations about mental health started.

How can your workplace get involved in #SockItToStigma?

Organisations are encouraged to proactively embrace projects which show that they are both understanding and accepting of the mental and emotional wellbeing challenges of their staff, and that they are there to support them as far as possible.

One way to do this is to organise a simple fundraising and sock-wearing competition between staff or departments, where each challenges the other to raise money for the #SockItToStigma cause (mental health training for schools, nationally) and the company commits to match what the employees raise. Fundraisers usually involve doing something fun that can be shared on the intranet or on social media – but the compulsory ingredient in the mix is that the activity must be done whilst wearing your brightest, weirdest socks!

We will support participating employees, organisations and schools through our social media and PR.

Fundraising Ideas

How can your school get involved in #SockItToStigma?

Schools need to show that they are both understanding and accepting of the mental and emotional wellbeing challenges of their staff and the children under their care, and that they are there to support them as far as possible. #SockItToStigma has proven in the past to be a fun, interactive way of getting these conversations started.

Use our #SockItToStigma Activity Pack as a starting point to do something fun together and to use the opportunity to speak about mental health, breaking the stigma around this serious subject.

Download our Activity Pack

All funds your school raises will be used to provide fully-funded mental health resources and training to schools through our #Headucation programme.

We make it easy for you to collect money and to donate to Shawmind – for the different ways to make a donation, please visit: https://shawmind.org/donate. All funds raised during this campaign go straight to our #Headucation fund to support children with mental health and stop stigma before it can start.

ShawMind has announced a partnership with award-winning tech company FlourishZone to support the wellbeing and mental health of 1000 people in the UK.

The joint venture enables free, easy access to FlourishZone’s cutting edge technology as the population emerges from the pandemic with the hope of helping build a stronger, more resilient society.

Fully anonymised and accessible on a smartphone, access to FlourishZone’s app through a personalised licence is completely free and available on a first come, first served basis through ShawMind.

Peter Wingrove, CEO ShawMind, said: “Unquestionably, the pandemic has taken its toll on us all. Whether people have experienced the direct trauma of bereavement or the more general anxiety and isolation of lockdown, every one of us has experienced stress.

“Some of the effects of this are not going to be felt for some time, so to help minimise immediate and long-term problems it is vital we put sustainable, easy and transformative solutions in place now.

“We are delighted to partner with FlourishZone as their technology is truly geared at enabling all of those elements to happen in one, easy-to-access place while keeping the whole process fully anonymised.”

FlourishZone’s tech uses augmented intelligence to join cutting edge artificial intelligence with the expertise of the world’s coaches, leading edge scientists and the individual.

It is an approach that integrates definable factors that drive flourishing, wellbeing, resilience and performance.

FlourishZone founder and director Adrienne Percival said: “ShawMind are the perfect partners for FlourishZone as we share so much of the same ethos – to help as many people as possible overcome barriers and obstacles to helping them thrive and flourish in their lives and work.

“I’m very much looking forward to working with them to reach those who need it most so we can move into the next period stronger and more resilient on an individual, organisational and societal level.”

If you would like one of the licenses available through ShawMind, click here.