May News from Healthy Minds! ☀️

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Your May Newsletter from Healthy Minds!

Dear Supporter,

Better late than never! Apologies our May newsletter is a little later than expected, but we hope you enjoy reading all about what has been happening at Healthy Minds nevertheless.

Read on for all the latest...

TOMORROW
Halifax Charity Gala

Come and enjoy a great afternoon at the Halifax Gala tomorrow!

There'll be fun and games, face painting, henna painting and a craft table at our stall! There are lots of prizes to be won in our lucky dip and 'throw the bean bag' games.

Or come and relax in our 'relaxation zone'.

Gates open at 11am, Manor Heath Park, Halifax. Get your tickets here.

Buy Your Tickets Here!

Open Mic for Mental Health

Join the Healthy Minds community for a special Open Mic for Mental Health to celebrate the final day of our Wellbeing Trail!

Come along for a relaxed afternoon of acoustic music, song and spoken word exploring our collective experience of mental health and wellbeing.

Are you interested in sharing your creativity at our Open Mic? We’d love to hear from you! To be involved please get in touch with Samantha:

samantha@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk or 07845 014 928.

Accessibility is important to us and we always aim to use accessible venues where possible. If you're joining our Open Mic and have any accessibility requirements please get in touch with Samantha to discuss.

Recovery & Support

Our fabulous knitter extraordinaire and Healthy Minds Champion, Carolyn Whittaker has struck again with a brilliant display at Tod Health Centre, complimented by our full range of activity, group and workshop flyers!

Great to see the Health Centre open to the public again! And huge thanks to Carolyn!

Also a massive THANK YOU!! to Roomfield Baptist Church. We were very grateful to receive a cheque for £150 from the wonderful people in Tod. We love running our Healthy Minds Drop In there and have been made very welcome there!

It was a chilly day outside so everyone tucked into a healthy, hearty vegetable soup! We handed out recipes and called it Granmas Vegetable Soup. One of our service users Lisa said it reminded her of her late Grandma.

Upper Valley workers got together with Shavon Pointon who is our local Morrison's Community Champion for Mental Health Awareness Week.

Shavon had asked the public to offer names of loved ones who had struggled with their mental health and ultimately had taken their own lives.

We provided information for people to access not just our services but also emergency numbers to call when they are feeling distressed.

Eid Celebrations

At the magnificent Eid Party in The Piece Hall, I had a pleasure of representing Healthy Minds alongside a fun card making activity.

50 young people with their families or friends made Eid cards with me that day whilst we also had a chat about Mental Health Awareness Month and Healthy Minds Services.

- Nimra, Community Health & Wellbeing Worker

We also headed to St. Augustine's Centre Halifax for Eid where they welcomed hundreds of people from diverse backgrounds to celebrate together.

It was a fun-filled event, full of excitement and joy. It was a great pleasure to distribute free bangles and chat with sanctuary seekers at our Healthy Minds stall.

Volunteer For Us!

Volunteer Walk Leaders needed!
We are looking for more people to join our fantastic team of volunteers who lead Healthy Minds' Walks for Wellbeing across Calderdale.
We offer a variety of walks so no need to be super-fit - just an enthusiasm for walking and the positive effect this has on mental health!
You will receive a full induction, training and support.
Please contact Cath with your interest: cath@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk or 01422 345154.

Find out more about Volunteering here!

Healthier Cooking on a Budget

We prepared and cooked a wonderful 5 bean vegan chilli at Tod Allotment Group last week.

Carefully cooked on our little fire and enjoyed in the open air, thanks to all our choppers and fire watchers.

We reckon that each little burrito cost us about 5p! Inflation-busting lush snack!

Find out more about our allotments here:

Todmorden
Sowerby Bridge

Saying Thank You This Volunteers Week

Our wonderful volunteer coordinator Cath orchestrated this beautiful window display at our Halifax office for #VolunteersWeek

Some quotes shared on our volunteer tree include...

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, its the only thing that ever has”

“Even if you change just one life, you’ve changed the world forever”

“The world is hugged by the faithful arms of volunteers”

“Volunteers are love in motion!”

To say thank you to the wonderful volunteers of Healthy Minds and local groups and organisations we held a special Volunteers Celebration Lunch at Mytholmroyd Community Centre!

Volunteers got competitive with ‘Volunteer Bingo’ and tried out a fun photo booth, journal-making and dream-catcher creating.

Everyone enjoyed an afternoon tea feast of sandwiches and cakes together and to end the afternoon we sang feel-good songs together – thank you to everyone who was able to join us for this great afternoon!

Time for a brew, time for you
at Morrisons Elland

During Mental Health Awareness week, Healthy Minds enjoyed two great days in Morrisons Elland, chatting with shoppers and giving out free little gifts of teabags and biscuits.

All thanks to Kat, Elland's fabulous Community Champion. Morrisons customers loved learning all about Healthy MInds. We were super pleased with the interest and support we received over the two days.

We even raised £200 from generous donations. And as always our ever reliable Healthy Minds volunteers came along and helped raise funds and spread the word. A massive thank you to everyone involved. Thank you!

Latest News From Time Out...

We had a workshop at the Orangebox in half term where young people learned how to plan and create an artwork canvas using acrylic paints.

We took a simple image – a feather and broke the process down into planning the shape with pens, then used templates to show how to apply the paint, then finally using paint implements/bushes we merged and dragged the paint to create a fabulous feather!

The technique was popular and we then explored other shapes and designs that reflected young people’s interests and gave them a sense of ownership of the artwork.

Special thanks on the day to support from volunteers Ffion for amazing painting and Karl for his fabulous pictures.

Street party from hell!

Just how wrong could a platinum jubilee street party go?

We spent the morning assembling our dastardly cast of characters and exploring outlandish scenarios. We started off with a creative writing session and then made our characters come to life in the afternoon with some wacky drawings!

Check out the video of our street party from hell here.

01422 345154