By Emily Slater, CEO, Mindfulness in Schools Project
For 2024, MiSP remains committed to making a positive impact on the lives of children and young people, and the adults working with them. Our recent Team ‘away day’ enabled us to revisit our current key objectives for the upcoming year, including:
- Expanding the reach of our School Mindfulness Pathways programme and resources. This will enable us to offer and articulate MiSP’s support to more schools and students, including those in underserved communities.
- Continuing to showcase the voices of children and young people, including those who have benefited from mindfulness practices.
- Increasing awareness of the connection between mindfulness and overall wellbeing. Mindfulness practices can enhance our lives in many ways. One goal in 2024 is to highlight the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing, find new ways to articulate this and share with you.
- Supporting our community of trained teachers, including a soon to be updated round-up of the latest evidence-based research.
So, please watch this space during the coming months! This list is by no means exhaustive, and we are always open to feedback and suggestions from our community on ways we can improve MiSP’s offering.
Recent projects for long-term impact
It has been a pleasure to begin training teachers in Warrington, thanks to the generous fundraising efforts of Esther Ghey in memory of her daughter, Brianna. Esther’s dedication and support has been incredibly inspiring and we are hugely grateful to be the recipient of such a heartfelt legacy. Thank you to everyone who has donated to the latest campaign which, at the time of writing, is close to reaching its target of £50k!
We are also proud to be working with schools in some of the most deprived areas of Newcastle upon Tyne, through a new partnership with the NEAT Academy Trust and the generosity of the CHK Foundation. This project builds on our previous training efforts in the region, and it has been such a highlight to see our training in action and hear directly from the children who benefit.
MiSP is currently exploring the possibility of joint funding bids in other geographical areas to make mindfulness a community-wide initiative. If you are interested in discussing potential projects in your area or Trust, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Bringing mindfulness to schools around the world
It’s also heart-warming for us to celebrate the growing MiSP global community, with around 1 in 4 of our participants joining us from overseas and partnerships where MiSP training is delivered in the local language (including Hong Kong, Japan and the Netherlands). To support our colleagues worldwide, we will continue to pilot training that works for different time zones. These will also hopefully support our UK colleagues’ varying work schedules.
As we move forward, MiSP remains committed to making mindfulness accessible to as many children and young people as possible. As ever, if you have thoughts about how we can fund work in your community or with a particular group of educational settings, do get in touch.
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