Better mental health for all postcards

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helper

Getting ready to run this activity

This is a step four activity, as part of the journey to completing the Community Impact Staged Activity Badge. If you haven't taken part in the activities from the earlier steps, this might not make sense yet. You can find the activities for steps one, two and three on the better mental health for all page.  

Remind yourself of everything people have done for in steps one to three of their Better Mental Health For All Project.

You'll need to ask yourself how did everyone identify the need, plan action, and take action. If you've resources people made, or photos and videos of them taking action, try to bring them to show everyone.

Write down or print out the following questions to ask on six pieces of paper and display them around your meeting space. The questions are:

1. What theme did we explore?
2. What did we do?
3. Why did we do it?
4. How did it make you feel? What skills did you develop?
5. How did the project make a difference for people or the environment?
6. What could we do now? How could we achieve the next stage of our badge?

Running the activity

Remember, remember

1. Gather everyone together in a circle.
2. Ask everyone to think about what they have done for, or can remember about, steps one to three of their Better Mental Health For All Project. People could use any resources, photos or videos that have been brought in to help them remember.
3. In small groups, everyone should move around the room, visiting each of the six questions on pieces of paper. They should think about each question, chat with their team, then write down their ideas. It’s especially important to write down the answers to the question six.
4. Gather everyone back together in a circle and asking each question in turn and getting everyone should share their ideas.
5. This is a great chance to congratulate everyone again – take a moment to celebrate successes and people’s hard work.

Make your postcards

1. Give everyone a blank postcard.
2. Everyone should decide who they’ll write to – for example, they could choose a friend, family member, neighbour or teacher.
3. Everyone should draw, craft or write on their postcard.
4. Some things they could include are:

• a positive message to make someone people
• some tips to help support mental wellbeing
• what they did or do to help their mental wellbeing
• Mind's 5 ways to wellbeing
• some facts about mental health that they've learned

Send your postcards

1. Everyone should work out how they’ll send their postcard – do they need to send it in the post, or can they give it to their person?
2. You could make lots of postcards and leave them around for people in the community to find.

This activity helps contribute towards some of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Find out more about the SDGs, and how Scouts across the world are getting involved.