FAQ

Thrival Kits™ is a mental health promotion project for children ages 8 to 12 and grades 4-6. Thrival Kits™ are shoeboxed sized kits that students fill with small meaningful items as they complete classroom challenges and activities throughout the school year. At the end of the school year, each participating student has their very own mental wellness toolkit to take with them into the summer and beyond.

In 2019, the Government of Manitoba announced a significant three-year investment based on the early impact and success of the Thrival Kits™ project. This has meant that starting in fall 2020, our project team is able to offer kits to approximately 30,000 students in Manitoba. The kits are currently being offered free for every Manitoba school enrolled.
We often receive requests for this project outside of Manitoba and are excited to keep seeing this project grow. Costs associated with this project are minimal, so if you would like to bring Thrival Kits™ to students in your area, contact us and we can discuss this with you directly.

Enrolment typically begins in May of each school year for that fall. Because this project follows a curriculum, the enrolment window closes each fall, usually in early October. More information on how to enroll will be posted prior to the enrolment beginning each year, but if you have questions or want to know more, please contact us at info@thrivalkits.ca

Thrival Kits™ typically arrive in October, so the program can be delivered in classrooms from November to June.

Yes. In September, a virtual training was recorded and is available for viewing once teachers log in to the facilitator hub. This training is for schools who have enrolled and are expecting kits to arrive during the specified delivery time allotted for the current school year. If you want to know more about what training entails, email info@thrivalkits.ca for more information.

Children at this age are naturally curious about themselves and are exploring concepts of who they are and their identities. Thrival Kits™ address a gap in evidence-informed mental health promotion programming for grades 4–6. We focused on this age group because according to ongoing youth suicide research conducted by the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth (see Phase One report here and Phase Two report here), youth who are most at risk of suicide begin to struggle with consistent school attendance after age 12. School classrooms remain one of the most common environments that deliver suicide prevention work, but the students who most need that information may not actually be in the classroom to receive it. Therefore, Thrival Kits™ targets grades 4–6, when nearly all children are still attending daily education programming, when students are naturally exploring their personal identities, and where there often exists strong bonds between the student and their regular homeroom teacher.

In order to remain consistent with the fidelity of the program, we recommend only enrolling your grades 4 – 6 students in this program. Thrival Kits™ was developed with the social-emotional development of grades 4 – 6 students in mind. If you are looking for programming for grades K – 3 or 7 and up, please contact info@thrivalkits.ca.

Most activities in Thrival Kits™ can be adapted to virtual learning with some creativity. We encourage teachers to adapt the activities to fit their schedule and classroom needs. Additionally, we have created eight weekly activities with video instructions for teachers to use if they are finding it difficult to adapt the activities in the facilitator’s guide.

Thrival Kits™ are to be sent home with students to encourage the daily use of mental health promotion strategies at home and throughout the summer.

If you are struggling with a specific theme, we encourage you to consult the materials provided in the facilitator hub on our website. If you find this is not what you are looking for, please contact info@thrivalkits.ca or a member of our project team with your questions and concerns.

Yes. Repetition is encouraged to embed the mental health practices and rights-based knowledge into the daily lives of students. Every year, students will receive a new student kit and teachers will receive a new facilitator kit in order to engage in all activities.