We at Born & Bred have selected Pure Mental NI as our charity partner for the year, to try and make a little difference in our local community.
Pure Mental are a charity focused on increasing mental health awareness in primary schools in Northern Ireland.
Pure Mental NI are a charity based in Northern Ireland working to battle mental health problems by opening up conversations with primary school children in Northern Ireland. The focus of the charity is to help primary school children to start conversations with someone they trust around their feelings and mental health.
Pure Mental was founded in 2019, by Jay Buntin and Matthew Taylor. Their aim at the beginning was to provide resources and support that they didn’t receive in their school years. Jay & Matthew believe that young people in Northern Ireland should have a say in the decisions being made about their mental health resources. By opening up opportunities to discuss mental health in primary schools, Pure Mental aim to break the stigma around mental health in NI. The Toolkits are fantastic resources for not only the children to learn from, but to guide teachers and parents to start the conversation around mental health.
Pure Mental have three core aims for their KS1 Toolkits:
- Growing young people's emotional vocabulary to encourage positive and informed conversations about how they feel.
- Fostering and improving understanding of healthy interpersonal relationships/friendships.
- Promoting the importance of talking about how you feel to someone you trust.
We had the opportunity to visit Braniel Primary School alongside Jay to see the Pure Mental KS1 toolkit in action. It was amazing to see how positively the children from P3 interacted with toolkits.
By supporting Pure Mental this year, we will be able to help:
- 1,600 KS1 primary school pupils here in Northern Ireland,
- As well as assist with covering costs of volunteer and staffing
If you are primary school teacher or parent in Northern Ireland and would like to access the KS1 resources for your school, reach out to verity@puremental.org. Once the KS1 resources are established successfully, Pure Mental will work to develop KS2 Resources, you can sign up to be notified once they are released.
We are super excited to see the impact our support will have on Pure Mental's resources this year and support Jay, Matthew and the team!
