St Joseph’s College Echuca has entered a three-year partnership with The Resilience Project to support students, staff and families with evidence-based wellbeing strategies to help build resilience.
The Resilience Project was founded in Melbourne in 2008 by Hugh van Cuylenburg, a leader in the mental health space and co-host of The Imperfects podcast.
The project’s school wellbeing program will start St Joseph’s College in 2025, teaching positive mental health in the classroom, staff room and wider community.
The three-year partnership has been made possible through a federal, Victorian and local government flood recovery grant, with funding from Campaspe Shire Council, Anglicare Victoria and Bendigo Bank Community Banks in Elmore, Lockington and Rochester.
The funding is being auspiced by Rochester Community House and will subsidise access to the program, not only for St Joseph’s College, but also local cluster schools and the wider community.
Other cluster schools participating in the school wellbeing program include Rochester Secondary College, St Joseph’s Primary School Rochester, Lockington Consolidated School, Rochester Primary School, Goornong Primary School and Nanneella Estate Primary School.
St Joseph’s College has been named host school for the program and will host student presentations by The Resilience Project this year to launch the program partnership.
A Year 7 to 9 presentation will be held on Tuesday, September 10, involving about 730 students from participating schools.
Year 10 and 11 students will attend a separate presentation on Thursday, September 12.
Parents and carers are invited to attend a ‘discovering resilience’ presentation in Rochester at the Campaspe Valley Community Centre from 6.30pm to 8pm on Thursday, September 12.
St Joseph’s College principal Anne Marie Cairns said the program partnership was a major coup for local schools and their communities.
“The wellbeing program is centred on The Resilience Project’s core principles of gratitude, empathy, mindfulness and emotional literacy and each lesson contains fun and engaging student journal activities and teacher resource sheets that will be delivered during our learning mentor classes.’’
St Joseph’s College will have its own partnership manager to support the successful implementation of the program.