Raising Money and Awareness for Youth Suicide and Depression

Raising Money and Awareness for Youth Suicide and Depression

New Zealand is a great place to live. It’s not corrupt, we have freedom of speech, we are surrounded by beautiful landscape and we have clean drinking water. We are lucky and on the surface our profile is glowing. As we all know, however, there are some exceptions to the rule and one of these is our high youth suicide rate. Last year alone, 46 teenagers aged between 15 and 19 took their own lives.

And it’s not just about suicide, evidently almost 20,000 NZ kids and teens were on anti-depressants in 2013, and that number has climbed every year since 2009, there are now more NZ children being medicated for mental disorders than ever with clinicians blaming the stress of being a modern-day teenager.

Heart for Youth is an organisation whose mission is to accept, connect, equip and encourage youth & young adults through the integration of training processes and programs covering life skills/values, self-awareness, self-esteem/self-discipline principles and personal growth.

Three Wellington artists are hoping to raise money and awareness for the cause with their upcoming exhibition; #JABexhibition which will include a silent auction at the Walrus Gallery in Taranaki Street, Wellington.

Angela Bendall, Jan Cromie and Bruce Winter have exhibited together on previous occasions but this will be the 1st time in 6 years that they’ve collaborated. JAB will run from August 5 – September 5 with their opening night charity auction set for Friday August 7th.

Heart For Youth spokesperson Ross McCook says ‘“We are delighted that “JAB” has chosen H4Y Trust to benefit from this exhibition by invitation of its outstanding artists. This is exactly the spirit that is Heart For Youth Trust, being - “A passionate bunch of Kiwis sharing ‘helping hands through caring hearts’ with the future generations of NZ”. Thankyou Angela and the team, looking forward to being a part of this event and are so grateful for all your support”.’

Contributing Artist Angela Bendall says ‘We’re really excited about this opportunity to raise money for a very worthy cause; Heart for Youth. I love the philosophy behind Heart for Youth because they aim to take it back to basics and where possible, get kids active and involved. They have 4 objectives;

ACCEPT - take youth and young adults right where they’re at.

CONNECT - connect with them through our many effective & resourceful initiatives.

EQUIP - give youth the tools and life set skills to help them grow into positive influential young men and woman.

ENCOURAGE - never stop giving helping hands, affirming words through caring hearts. Form lifelong connections & develop our youth into mentors and support people themselves.’

The exhibition will kick off with an opening night at the gallery on August 7 and will include a silent auction with all proceeds from the auction going to the charity. Also a percentage of each sale will also be donated to the trust.

If you would like to donate to Heart for Youth just click here now.

For more information on the exhibition please check these links:

http://www.sassybarker.com/#!exhibitions/cpqx

www.facebook.com/sassybarker

http://www.sassybarker.com/#!blog/c1c6v

https://youtu.be/PEIfnSwE4mQ

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