People at a meeting around tables

NMC Leads 2nd Mental Wellness Whiteboard!

 

On July 22, 2019, NMC led a second roundtable discussion with multiple mental wellness partners that included State Senator Pat Spearman, Lady GaGa’s Born This Way Foundation Executive Director Maya Enista-Smith and Kyler Nipper, Founder of Kyler’s Kicks.  Senator Spearman spoke about the suite of mental wellness bills she brought to the floor of the 2019 Nevada Legislative session that included SB204 https://legiscan.com/NV/bill/SB204/2019 and SB267 https://legiscan.com/NV/bill/SB267/2019.  NMC President, Julie Murray, and Project Director, Kristy Keller, provided testimony on behalf of both bills and were proud to be a collaborative partner with Senator Spearman to ensure the complex mental health needs in Nevada could begin to be addressed. SB204 – Requires public and private schools in Nevada to adopt suicide prevention policies that includes outreach for students most at-risk while SB267 – Requires public and private schools, in partnership with non-profits and other community providers, to develop internal systems that mitigate the social determinants that prevent students from thriving.

 

Maya Enista-Smith, Executive Director of the Born This Way Foundation provided an update that included the work the foundation is doing to build kind cultures in schools through a program called Be Kind 21.  In addition, she discussed the Teen Mental Health First Aid being expanded to 43 additional schools that includes a Train the Trainer model of which 9,000 adults to date have already been trained.  Kyler Nipper, who founded Kyler’s Kicks after being bullied and physically assaulted for his new tennis shoes while attending middle school,  spoke about the Kyler’s Kicks Foundation and how he is planning to expand it from providing shoes to youth in need to the creation of Kyler Kicks Lounges where young people can drop in to participate with art and music therapy.  He hopes to have locations throughout the country that will include a closet to house and distribute all of the shoes he has collected.  NMC is honored to lead collaborative discussions that directly impact the progress on substantive issues such as mental health and wellness.