The Girls Inc. Experience provides mentorship, programming, and safe, pro-girl spaces that help girls explore their emotions, build resilience, and take charge of their mental and physical wellbeing. For the past five years, The Saks Fifth Avenue Foundation has provided a grant in support of our mental health programming that nourishes the mind-body connection. To celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month, we are sharing some recent stories about the creative approaches that Girls Inc. Affiliates are taking to support girls’ mental health:

Zen Zone Spring Break Camp

This past March, Girls Inc. of Hamblen County gathered participants for their Zen Zone Spring Break Camp–a one-week program dedicated entirely to mental wellness practices. Each day featured a theme related to achieving mental wellness: Self Care; Enjoying Nature; Relaxing with the Arts; and Sports & Movement.

Self Care Day kicked off the week with spa activities, journaling, and discussions about coping skills to help relieve anxiety and depression. Girls received swag bags with mental health tools to use throughout the week and at home and got to create their own wellness items!

Rainy weather interrupted Enjoying Nature Day, but that didn’t stop staff from bringing the beauty of nature indoors! Girls spent the afternoon repotting succulents to take home. On Arts Day, girls got a backstage tour of the historic Tennessee Theater in downtown Knoxville, and for Sports & Movement Day, girls highlighted the women trailblazers of basketball and enjoyed time on the courts at the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

Creative Wellness Activities

Girls Inc. of San Antonio staff worked with a local shelter to provide lessons and activities related to positive self-esteem. This included activities like crafting paper “Self-Esteem Pizzas,” which girls decorated with ingredients and toppings representing their different positive traits.

Girls Inc. of San Antonio’s New Family Navigator also conducted a creative wellness activity with parents. On notecards, parents wrote down the hopes and dreams they had for their daughters. These dreams were placed on a dream catcher that now hangs in the San Antonio office to remind staff of the purpose of their work with girls and their families.

For Mental Health Awareness Month, Girls Inc. of San Antonio partnered with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America to support and foster self-confidence and encouragement in the midst of end-of-year state academic testing. Volunteers from Affinius Capital helped sort, organize, and assemble mental health-themed Girls thINC Outside the Box take-home activity kits that BBBS mentors used with their mentees.