July 15: World Youth Skills Day

Jul 10, 2024

July 15 is World Youth Skills Day, a United Nations observance day that celebrates the importance of equipping youth with skills that will benefit their future.

In Canada, 70% of mental health problems have their onset during childhood or adolescence. Evidence demonstrates that promotion, prevention, and early intervention initiatives for youth show positive returns on investment in adulthood.

CMHA Vancouver-Fraser’s Here4Peers Program is a youth-led, interactive, and experiential mental health well-being program for youth aimed at increasing the mental health awareness in early adolescence, promoting mental wellness, reducing the stigma of mental illness, and creating a supportive climate for youth to access help for mental health concerns.

The program has two main components: the (1) Here4Peers Program and (2) the Here4Peers Workshop. Students in grades 10-12 are trained to be Youth Facilitators, and they present the Here4Peers Workshop to Grade 7 students in catchment elementary schools. The Youth Facilitators gain skills in public speaking, mental health literacy, teamwork, time management, and group facilitation while building confidence and volunteer hours.

Meanwhile, through the 90-minute workshop, Grade 7 students gain an increased awareness of mental health issues and coping tools. As young people often turn to peers first when facing personal challenges, providing a team of trained and supervised “peer” youth facilitators is an intentional way to engage and normalize conversations regarding mental health.

A Grade 7 teacher reported the following: “The workshop was a powerful experience because it helped one of my students to find the courage she needed to approach me about how she had been feeling.  She learned through the workshop that her feelings of depression were not normal, nor were her thoughts of self-harm.  As a direct result of the workshop, she learned that she needed help and she learned how to reach out to her peers and to myself. She is now receiving treatment and is a much happier human being because of caring support she received from the Here 4 Peers student leaders.”

In honour of World Youth Skills Day, please consider donating here (and select “Here4Peers” from the drop-down menu) to help us bring Here4Peers to more schools across the Lower Mainland.