The ‘Hopeful Minds for Teens‘ program is a 12-module workbook that introduces the Five Keys to Shine Hope™: Stress Skills, Happiness Habits, Inspired Actions, Nourishing Networks, and Eliminating Challenges. This comprehensive approach empowers teens to navigate challenges, embrace positivity, and empower resilience.
The workbook employs a peer-to-peer teaching style, encouraging both individual reflection and group discussions. Interactive elements such as engaging activities, games, creative expressions, worksheets, and puzzles enhance the learning experience. The workbook itself is the curriculum, so educators are not necessary for use. We encourage having facilitators, yet it is designed for anyone to use.
Kathryn Goetzke, Chief Hope Officer of The Shine Hope Company and founder of iFred, emphasizes the program’s significance: “This is a program I wish I had when I was a teen, and it is everything I have learned through my lived experience, the loss of my father, my last 20 years in mental health and last 10 studying hopelessness and hope. All youth need to be taught these skills as they protect against violence, aggression, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and school dropouts, and with hopelessness at an all-time high, everyone must be taught. Hopelessness is learned, we are failing our kids with the rising numbers identifying with hopelessness and instead of solving the problem, we blame our kids. We must take responsibility, and start by teaching them ‘how’ to hope.”
This innovative program is designed to equip teenagers with essential skills to foster a Hopeful Mindset while building resilience against the prevalent concern of hopelessness among adolescents. It is a program tested and approved by teens, and with 57% of teen girls in the US alone experiencing persistent hopelessness, the time for ‘how to’ hope is now.
