Now And Beyond - Gibraltar Mental Health And Wellbeing Festival For Schools
GibSams in collaboration with the Department of Education will be hosting the Now & Beyond Gibraltar Mental Health and Wellbeing Festival for Schools.
A statement from the Government and GibSams follows below:
CEO Louisa Rose and Youth Board member of Beyond Monica Leung will be arriving in Gibraltar on Monday 21st November 2022 to deliver the online and in person Now & Beyond Gibraltar Mental Health and Wellbeing Festival for Schools on Tuesday 22nd November 2022.
The festival will see a full day of online and in person sessions tabled for all the schools in Gibraltar to access. There are sessions for pupils across all key stages, as well as a session after school for education staff. In the evening at 7pm Louisa will be delivering her Social Media Friend or Foe live in person presentation, which will deal with the topic of social media. This session will be similar in content to the in-person session that will be delivered to some pupils throughout the day. To complement sessions provided by Now & Beyond, schools have planned a myriad of activities throughout the day to continue to give our young people the tools to promote positive well-being.
Louisa Rose:
Louisa Rose is CEO of Beyond and the founder of Now and Beyond – a free, national mental health festival for the educational community. Previously, Louisa worked as a social media consultant for ten years and is particularly interested in the intersection oftech and young people's mental health. Louisa is diagnosed with depression, anxiety, Tourette’s and OCD traits and publicly reflects on her personal mental health journey.
Monica Leung:
Monica Leung is a Beyond youth board member and now also the Operations Manager for Beyond. Monica is passionate about making real change to young people’s mental health. Diagnosed with OCD at age 12, she hopes to challenge the stigma of mental health in minority communities. Monica is on a mission to do more impactful work, and this starts here.
"Every child should feel supported and empowered, whatever the challenges they face. I’m here to challenge the stigma of mental health, particularly within minority communities. I also hope to start more conversations about the impact of racism and discrimination on young people’s mental health."
Beyond:
Beyond is a youth mental health charity that exists to improve young people’s mental health in the UK. Led by the well-known activist and founder Jonny Benjamin MBE and CEO Louisa Rose, it is driven by an impassioned youth board who are determined to instil new attitudes and drive change so that young people can go ‘beyond just surviving’, with a shared goal of improving youth mental health in the UK.
Beyond is home to the UK’s only mental health festival for educational settings, Now and Beyond, reaching over one million young people, parents and teachers through two annual festivals since February 2021. They are also the founders ofthe UK’s only searchable, location-based database of youth mental health and wellbeing experts. Cross sector, multidisciplinary and geo located, the Now and Beyond directory offers the kind of directory and signposting service that “could help to improve the join up between local services and to reduce the complexity in navigating local provision for schools, parents, and children”, Dame Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner.
Social Media Friend or Foe live in person presentation by Louisa Rose
This session will provide an overview of the impact of social media on the minds of young people as well as tips and advice for establishing small behavioural changes to reduce our dependence on digital devices. Louisa draws on her experience as a social media consultant together with her role as CEO of a national youth mental health charity (Beyond)to reflect on how we came to be a nation addicted and crucially, how we can instigate a u-turn for the next generation. She addresses the role of accountability in tech as well as how to help young people and their grownups to reclaim control of their relationship with tech.
