Life Skills
Life Skills
Jamma International's vision is the wellbeing of the planet and its people, and we feel passionate about supporting projects that will empower people to improve their wellbeing.
Agneta Johansson, the Director of Wellbeing at Jamma International, has a vision to design and deliver Life Skills programmes to build capacity and resilience in both organisations and individuals.
Our initial project is 'The Brain, How it Creates our Reality and Our Behaviour', exploring how we become more resilient in every day life.
We know how to take care of our body but we know very little about how our brain works. If you understand how the brain works, you have the ability to change your behaviour.
The first project in Life Skills being developed will focus on the brain, how it creates our reality and affects our behaviour. Not in a detailed scientific way, but in a way that can help us understand how little the brain has changed since cave men and how this can cause a lot of suffering in today's world.
Our project will be a new approach to mental health. This knowledge about brain function and some basic skills on managing our tricky brain will be a foundation to manage our life in a more constructive day-to-day way.
It is in the brain that our lives are played out and where all our perception from the world is coming from. It is therefore very important to understand how the brain works, what is causing our mental struggle and how to take control.
We believe that when we understand how the brain influences our behaviour and why we sometimes feel the way we do, we can begin to take control and manage our emotions to improve our thoughts and feelings.
Jamma has identified partners to develop this Life Skills training with, partners who have the same values as Jamma and a passion to deliver this knowledge to the widest possible audience to make the biggest impact.
Mental Health Innovations (MHI) is a charity that uses digital innovation, data-driven analysis and the experience of clinical experts to improve the mental health of the UK population through the provision of digital tools, support and resources.
Jamma feels very strongly that the Mission, Vison and Values of MHI aligns with our own, particularly, their aim to provide access to high quality digital mental health services to everyone, quickly and efficiently through the power of technology.
The partnership with MHI will focus on a Life Skills training programme for the volunteers that support the SHOUT text service. MHI provide training (6293 volunteers trained so far) for their volunteers who respond to the text messages from vulnerable people and along side this training they want to provide additional support for the volunteers to manage their own wellbeing. MHI deliver training through Hive Learning and are developing the Jamma Life Skills project for that platform.
When the MHI volunteers Life Skills training programme has been developed and evaluated it will be modified to suit all volunteers and will be available for all voluntary organisations that supports volunteering.
MHI runs SHOUT, a free confidential, 24/7 text messaging support service. Shout Volunteers have taken more than 750,000 conversations with people who are anxious, stressed, depressed, suicidal or overwhelmed and who need immediate support.
Training For Life is a not-for-profit training company focusing on courses in mental health. All the profits are donated to the charity Student Life. Student Life, a registered charity, supports young people’s mental health across the South East of England.
Training for Life with Student Life have created a bespoke training package about Mental Health and Wellbeing, to be delivered as part of the RSHE curriculum for students in years 10 and 11. The course consists of six sessions. The first four sessions cover mental health: what mental health is, the mental health continuum, depression, anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders and the support we can get around these. Session five is a Coronavirus awareness session about remaining safe and responsible even as restrictions in the UK ease. Our final session will be a session about brain functioning, which has been developed using Jamma's Life Skills manual. The aim of this session is to increase understanding of brain processing, including the threat response, and explore how this understanding can be used to improve an individuals wellbeing.
Jamma chose to partner with Training for Life and Student Life as they share our vision to work in partnership with their audience. The Life Skills programme will be designed and develop with the young people who will receive the training, they will ensure that the knowledge and skills are presented in a way that uses language and examples that are relevant to their age group.
This training will be piloted in August 2021 and deliver the full training in schools from September 2021.
We share the vision to make the Life Skills programmes available to the widest possible audience, and following the delivery of the project in schools, we will work with Training for Life to develop this Life Skills programme into a training package for children, young people in other age groups and adults.
Jamma is supporting Resource Africa to bring a voice to rural communities living alongside wildlife to tell the story of how the equilibrium of sustainable wildlife management and guardianship can be supported and maintained.