Zero Reasons Why JOCO Advisory Board Meeting Notes
October 9, 4:30-6:00p, Prairie Star Room, Lenexa City Hall
Discussion
Middle School Committee
We spent the majority of our time at this month’s board meeting discussing the middle school committee. The goal of the middle school committee is to provide quality mental health education to middle schooler’s in the format a 45-60 minute presentations which includes three phases: alleviate stigma by debunking myths, providing healthy and engaging mental health practices, and provide quality resources on how to respond during a mental health crisis.
We were joined in person by Leo and Jared from the Johnson County Mental Health Center who have done a lot of work presenting to middle schools and are going to help us connect with middle schools.
We were also joined via Zoom by ZRW alum Omar Abdelmoity who originated the Middle School Committee in 2020 and is currently working to help us implement more throughout Johnson County. Omar has a fully developed middle school committee presentation that is ready to be used immediately. While we may develop presentations for each phase at a later time, our goal right now is to use the existing middle school presentation at least one time this semester, probably at the end of November or beginning of December.
Next Steps for Middle School Committee
- Determine who will be on the committee. At least 9 teens must be available for each middle school presentation. Reach out to Davis Finley if you are interested in participating.
- Determine a bi-weekly or monthly time for the middle school committee to meet via zoom. We are potentially going to work together with the Wichita middle school committee and hold our Zoom meetings together across chapters.
- Once we have enough members for the middle school committee, we will work to determine everyone’s availability and begin working to schedule a presentation with a local middle school.
Yellowout Games
We Also briefly discussed Yellowout games again. Rather than hold fundraisers outside of school, our goal is to develop a simple ZRW logo t shirt that schools can sell through their store, making the process of promoting the game and giving out t shirts much easier.
Next Steps for Yellowout Games
- Contact whoever is in charge of planning themes for basketball games and see if they will help plan a ZRW night
- Contact your school store about the possibility of printing ZRW t-shirts and selling them. Davis and his team will work on developing a t shirt design that can be sent to school stores.
If you are interested in holding a Yellowout game at your school in the winter, please begin working on these two steps next week. Reach out to Davis with any questions or for any help you might need getting started.