Community Mentoring: Collaborating to support youth mental health

Project Description Narrative:

The Honest, Open, Proud (HOP) program aims to eliminate stigma around mental health challenges by helping individuals decide for themselves when and how to disclose their story. As an existing program, over 100 independent facilitators have been trained to deliver HOP for high schoolers, but there is no infrastructure to provide ongoing support and coaching to those trained and no system of distribution and outreach in place to extend training and support across the state to reach more youth and communities. This mentoring project aimed to develop a community/school collaboration model for implementation and expansion of the HOP program statewide to empower Wisconsin youth to make strategic decisions on whether and how to disclose mental health challenges.

Project partners: Mentor partners: Rogers InHealth/WISE, Wisconsin Initiative for Stigma Reduction (WISE) Coalition-statewide learning community with over 80 members

Mentee partners: Cooperative Educational Service Agency (CESA), #6 (Oshkosh), #7 (Green Bay), #9 (Tomahawk), and #10 (Chippewa Falls), Wisconsin Safe & Healthy Schools (WISH) Center, Youth?serving agencies, including schools, nonprofits, human services and faith-based organizations