Representatives from RIFE Resources Ltd., the Lloydminster public and Lloydminster Catholic School Divisions, and the SHINE program, were all smiles last week as RIFE donated $15,000 to SHINE. Taylor Weaver Meridian Source
It’s often said, “kids are our future,” and after a two-year global pandemic, ensuring today’s youth have the mental health resources they need to succeed is more important than ever.
Thanks to a $15,000 donation from Calgary-based RIFE Resources Ltd., the Border City’s SHINE (strong healthy individuals navigating emotions) Program can continue educating the community, particularly youth, about mental health and proactive mental health strategies to use throughout their lifetime through its Move Your Mood, Move Your Body program.
SHINE works with elementary schools in both the Lloydminster public and Lloydminster Catholic School Divisions in Lloydminster to provide students with programs geared towards helping them gain positive coping strategies and resiliencies. SHINE partners with community organizations to provide mental health programs and activities in the community throughout the school year and summer, as well as providing information and activities online for children, parents, and families to access through their website, social media and schools’ web page.
The donation came in last week and a cheque presentation was held in the SHINE room on the second floor of Ecole St. Thomas. The SHINE team, along with representatives from RIFE and both school divisions, were elated with the funding as they know the impact SHINE has had on the community.
“It’s really awesome for us because we’ll be able to get supplies for Move your Mood, Move your Body, and we can put on Move your Mood,” she Erica Leniczek, a SHINE wellness coach at College Park School, St. Joseph Elementary School and Mother Teresa Early Childhood Education Centre.
“Sometimes, these government-funded programs don’t always have the most funding for us because there’s so many things that people need from the government, so, having extra funding like this come in so we can provide the community with more support is amazing. It’s going to be a life-changer for us with what we can do with SHINE over the next couple of years because that money can be put into different resources.
“We are working with the schools, the children, and the community of Lloydminster. We service residents from zero to 100 years old, teaching them mental health, and we teach them proactive mental health strategies to use throughout their lifetime.”
The Move Your Mood program is near and dear to Leniczek as she ran it last summer and witnessed firsthand its effectiveness.
“When you run Move your Mood, you start with an introduction piece like a warmup with the kids, then we run through a physical activity piece, so it’s all about using movement to influence your mental health and how you are feeling that day,” she said.
“We start with that warmup, we go through the movement piece that’s usually some kind of fun game, it’s interactive and they get to collaborate with one another. Then we go through the mental health piece, which is largely mindfulness-based, staying connected to the present moment, to what is happening right now, learning how to do breathing techniques, grounding techniques, and things like that with the students. Then we run through a nutrition piece, which is also really important, and that nutrition piece isn’t necessarily what they hear in schools about the five food groups, it’s ‘how do we make nutrition accessible for everyone, regardless of what’s in your household or what you have access to,’ which is really important for kids because they’re not the ones going to buy their groceries.”
Trista Brewer RIFE’s field facilities engineer, was on hand with other RIFE staff to share the excitement and field questions from local media.
“I think I can speak for the group when I say we’re all really grateful for RIFE’s initiatives towards mental health,” she said.
“Through COVID and coming out of COVID, we, in a lot of group discussions and safety meetings, it became very apparent a lot of our team has suffered from fatigue. There can be a lot of stress in the oil and gas industry that go hand-in-hand with working really hard. Our management team talked about it and highlighted some of the things we’re seeing from a mental-health perspective, and our management team got right behind it.”
Brewer explained RIFE decided to allocate funds to a few different pillars, one of which being mental health.
“We formed the RIFE Lloydminster Mental Health Committee,” she said.
“We had a couple meetings and each brought up some organizations we had heard about or were interested in learning more about. I myself heard about SHINE because my son participated in one of the lunchtime programs and I thought it was something that was really cool for him to be a part of. I contacted SHINE and got an amazing run down. I knew about one small part of what they do in the school through a lunchtime program, and I learned about the summer programs that run 12 months of the year, and learned about the Catholic and public school divisions. One of the other organizations we talked to was more of a crisis management, and we as a committee felt so strongly about the prevention aspect and helping kids that are struggling right now before it becomes a big issue later on in life.”
Brewer also explained SHINE requested RIFE support its Move your Mood, Move your Body program, something she and her team were in complete support of.
“Helping kids, it helps all of us. It helps future generations, and we’re so grateful for RIFE’s support, and to be able to support something that’s going to have a lasting impact.”
No matter the age, whether it’s in the classroom or out on the job site, Brewer knows mental health affects everyone.
“Whether it be stress, whether it be fatigue, burnout, social isolation … all of the things that affect everybody, but they’re hard to talk about. I’m really grateful to have such a socially-conscious employer,” she said.
