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The Bullet Points of Click Happy for Busy Teachers

We bring cameras and take over one day of your photography or arts program to teach an intro class to Click Happy
Taught by a past winner of New Zealand's Creative Photographer of the Year
Kids learn manual photography settings and resilience skills at the same time in the ideally two hour class (we can teach it in one hour but it is better as two)
Several students per school will win scholarships for a master class with Mandi Lynn that takes place during term 2 and 3
In the first term of the masterclass, the students learn documentary photography skills
In the second term (term 3) they use their new skills to create a visual story of a local charity
The wellbeing program that is taught alongside the photography has won the Health and Wellbeing award in the Wellington community service awards

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Don't take our word for it...Listen to Kawhia's principal instead

What is it gonna cost our school?

Absolutely nothing.

Except possibly a letter of recommendation if we do a good job. (this helps us with our future funding rounds)

We have already sourced the funding so you don't need to worry.

And you can thank your local district council instead for the support.

So basically, your art / photography teacher gets a day of support, the students get a chance for a scholarship. and it costs the school zero off the budget.

Sweet that sounds good...now what?

Excellent. We are currently on a national road trip and will be travelling back through the Wairarapa and the Hutt Valley on the week of the 6-9th of April. The 12th is also available.

We will be travelling through the South Island on the weeks of 10-23rd of May. (we will bring extra blankets for the caravan!)

If these dates do not work for your school, that is okay we can book something during term two. In the meantime, if you have keen beans they can jump to the front of the line by applying for the scholarship here.

So contact Mandi Lynn on 0211412646 or hello@clickhappy.org to see if we can fit you into this leg of the trip.

Our Why - Grit + Self compassion:

Talent is awesome but grit is shown to beat it in the long game. But if you combine talent and grit...look out you have a creative changemaker in your midst. Our goal is to find the future visual ruckus makers. The ones who have talent and we want to put them into an experience that will help to hone their grit.

Why because we are making amends to the next generation. Collectively we have left them with a hot mess and we feel it is important as creatives to do what we can to help them learn skills to help sort it before it is too late.

Youth stepping into the working world are going to face something we never had to:

Post-COVID recession
Global Environmental Crisis
Encroachment of AI into the job market
Highly addictive aspect of screens on their ability to deeply focus

The world economic forum has indicated that the most important skills for future workers:

Creativity / Innovation / Problem solving skills
Social Leadership
Technology use
Resilience and well being.

Kiwi youth are struggling with that last one.

Research for the Prime Minister’s Mental Health Project showed:

20% of young people are likely to experience a mental health issue
One in five young New Zealanders will be affected by depression by the age of 18;
Almost one in five meets the criteria for an anxiety disorder by age 19.
Our suicide rates are #1 in the world for youth suicide

And these stats came before COVID did...

Our trust started its life as a creative response to body shame (you can check out our founders TEDx talk here). What we realized is the bigger issue was self-compassion as a whole. Our youth program started as a means of helping to develop self-compassion in youth so that they would not have to face the crippling effects of a lack of it in their life. A meta-analysis found that self-compassion in youth developed resilience in the face of trauma or setbacks, decreased their likelihood of developing depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. If self-compassion were a vaccine it would be given to every tween but where do we learn to teach something that many teachers and parents struggle with themselves? This is why we are passionate about our evolving program.

We started with a general creative compassion program for youth called the HeArtivists but the youth in South Auckland and Upper Hutt helped us to co-develop the program into Click Happy.

Our goal is to give youth a practical experience that allows them to test and refine the soft skills that make them relevant in the future workspace. We, like you, want to assist them to shift from vulnerable passive consuming scrollers to powerful deep thinking creative change-makers.

We use a mash-up of Stoic philosophy, ancient mindfulness and wellbeing frameworks, and modern research-based methods to create experiences that aim to deepen self-compassion, creative resilience, and emotional fluency. We are the opposite of an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff. We are the artists well off the edge showing the youth a path of creative relevance. We would love for you to join us.