A stick insect named Zippy is now being utilised across T&T to help children from five to seven years old cope with their mental health.
Zippy's Friends is just one in a series of interventions from RBC's Education Foundation and the School Leadership Centre of Trinidad and Tobago Children's Mental Health Programme. It was founded by the Partnership for Children in the UK, which is a charitable organisation.
Members of the School Leadership Centre include school psychologist Allyson Hamel-Smith, education consultant/monitor Ramona Khan, founding member of the School of Leadership Centre Elizabeth Crouch, retired principals Dr Primnath Gooptar and Tara Laglee and school counsellor Sonji Harris.
Last Friday, Hamel-Smith, Crouch and Khan spoke about the benefits of the mental programme and their vision for promoting the emotional health of young children here.
They met at the Maria Regina Grade School, Port-of-Spain, where the Zippy's Friends programme has been operational. To date, it has been adopted by 22 schools, including Carenage Girls' Government, Montrose Government and Penal Presbyterian. Its slogan is Good Mental Health For Children For Life.
Patting themselves on the back, Zippy's Friends' torchbearers said 511 pupils benefitted from the programme 2011 to 2012, while 1,420 students are benefitting from the programme during the current phase 2012-2013.
Hoping more principals adopt it
Asked about Zippy's Friends, Crouch said, "We felt school principals and teachers, principals and leaders needed to have a forum to draw initiatives and get together to solve problems in schools. We started in 2000 with the help of the RBC.
"We felt we had to have difficult conversations in schools. We found very small children had to find the coping skills to deal with bullying. We found emotional health is the key to national problems. We are appealing to the principals to make a change and to help them cope and support their staff."
Relying on her experience as an educator, Crouch paid kudos to the programme.
"It is about searching for solutions to problems in real life. It is an excellent programme since it calls for relationship-building, including trust and friendship," Crouch said.
Chiming in, Hamel-Smith added, "We are not researchers sitting in a room doing research. But a lot of research went into the monitoring programmes. We found countries like Brazil and Mauritius had copied it. We wanted children to learn skills that will help them to deal with everyday difficulties and to live more happily."
Citing the example of parents who ensure their children get vaccines for measles and whooping cough. Hamel-Smith said the Zippy's Friends programme was "an emotional antidote."
"We give children antibodies for sicknesses. But do we give them resources for psychological emotional support? We are helping them with basic resilience and it is also geared toward the teachers," she said.
"We feel Zippy's Friends should be on the social emotional curricula. It is something a child should be exposed to. Even pre-school children are emotional and should know how to handle their emotions."
Zippy's tenets teachchildren how to:
�2 Identify and talk about their feelings
�2 Say what they want to say
�2 Listen attentively
�2 Ask for help
�2 Make and keep friends
�2 Deal with loneliness and rejection
�2 Say sorry
�2 Cope with bullying
�2 Resolve conflicts
�2 Deal with change and loss including deaths
�2 Adapt to new situations
Learn more about Zippy's Friends at www.partnership for children.org.uk or at 632-8311.
About Zippy's Friends
Zippy is a stick insect and his friends are a group of boys and girls. The stories show them facing issues that are familiar to young children–friendship, making and losing friends, bullying and dealing with change and loss and making a new start. Each story is illustrated by a set of brightly coloured pictures and supported by activities such as drawing, role play and playing games. Locally, Arima New Govt, Spring Village Hindu and Tranquillity Govt are among 22 schools that have adopted it.