Engaging Educational Resources

Iris the Dragon is seeking students from schools of education, early childhood development/psychology or design to assist with the creation of online educational tools that can build its free resource library that helps to provide families, communities and caregivers with tools that facilitate discussion around mental health and wellness. Examples include colouring pages, conversation starters, and maybe even more innovative than that!Iris the Dragon is open to discussing the type of educational tools to be developed but Iris the Dragon would like to use its existing characters from its book series.

Help a Mental Health Charity Explore Why Donors Donate

Project ScopeWe are ready to take our charity to the next level and the need for tools to support mental health and wellbeing throughout life's transitions is highly in need as the world has increasing numbers of those affected by mental health. Presently the main source of revenue for the charity is grants that enable us to produce tools that help the everyday person navigate mental health and wellbeing . We would like to find other ways to raise money for the projects we have waiting in development and we need to better understand why donors donate in particular to the mental health cause and to an information based service vs. front line delivery.We are positioned well to implement our empirically backed approaches to changing attitudes and behaviours about mental health and wellbeing but lack resources. Relying on government grants is time consuming and not sustainable. Help us better understand why donors donate so we can develop a donation strategy that appeals to them.Organizational Background InformationIris the Dragon is a solutions-oriented, social enterprise, employing proven and effective approaches and delivery formats to address the challenge of social inclusion of those with mental health disabilities in our society. Iris the Dragon has achieved this, nationally in Canada and globally, by correcting misunderstanding and misinformation about mental illness through the vehicle of storytelling and known educational approaches that influence attitude change. Iris the Dragon specializes in creating innovative ways to deliver key psycho educational messages about mental illness for both the caregiver and the individual with the disorder. The Iris the Dragon Charity was one of the first to use the creative medium of storytelling to address mental illness in Canada and has been recognized for its innovation through awards such as The Royal Ottawa’s Inspirational Award for Leader in Mental Health. All of the books have been vetted and endorsed by leading experts in the mental health field. Iris the Dragon has also worked closely with major Mental Health Hospitals in Canada, including The Royal Ottawa, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, CAMH, and Sick Kids –Toronto. In addition, we are part of the Opening Minds Group of the Mental Health Commission of Canada and an empirical study was completed by them on the effectiveness of the Iris the Dragon tools demonstrating significant attitude changes to social distancing. Our interventions feature innovative delivery methods for individuals, schools, and workplaces. Our direction, historically, has been on "early age" education, detection and risk management of mental illness, which can alleviate symptoms in addition to creating awareness around how to support and include people facing challenges. In 2017, Iris the Dragon expanded its products into workplace mental health education to shape the attitudes and behaviours of managers to be more inclusive of those with mental health disabilities in Canada.See Google Drive for more information - “Background on Iris the Dragon” folder.Final OutputFinal projects will includea company overview,a SWOT analysis,a problem statementan analysis of the problemrecommendationsGUIDING QUESTIONSGeneral analysis of why people donate - and what (time or money?)What insights can you provide into why or when people might donate to tools developed by a not for profit vs. front line on the ground programming for communities or specific populations?What makes people donate to a mental health charity that provides tools not front line services?Can you provide recommendations about how to encourage such donations?

Research - Youth Resilience & Mental Health

The student or students will be assisting the charity research the best approaches to address the challenges faced in youth which can impact mental health. The charity is developing a tool to improve adolescent (10-18) health and wellbeing and the students would be assisting with identifying common stressors associated with this age range that impact mental health and the strategies that are most effective at addressing or reframing these experiences for youth so the impact on their mental health does not go unaddressed.

Short Animated Children's Series

Iris the Dragon would like to create a series of short animated videos with their puppet Iris the Dragon that addresses coping strategies for children and adults on how to navigate life's stresses to reduce its impact on one's mental health. Iris the Dragon has a puppet made and the puppet could be used live in a the series and sent to the school to use or the puppet could be scanned 3D and used as an object in an animated sequence.