About the Nonprofit
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Through educational programming, research, and advocacy, the JCK Foundation promotes mental wellness in schools, businesses and communities by opening up conversations, sharing hopeful stories of mental health resilience, and connecting people to mental health resources.
The JCK Foundation was started by John Tessitore- a friend and mentee of John Kelly. Eighteen years ago, when Kelly learned Tessitore also suffered from OCD and Depression, he took him under his wing and made him feel comfortable in his own skin and empowered him to understand he can live a happy and healthy life even while suffering from a mental illness. The support and love Kelly provided for Tessitore, and so many others, is the reason we believe connection and community are the key building blocks of mental wellness. To honor Kelly's vision, we work together with communities and schools to improve mental wellness and resilience among our youth. We believe progress can be made one school community at a time, through hands-on awareness and prevention programs that encourage an understanding that every person needs to feel valued, accepted and motivated to make a positive impact on themself and on their peers. What began as a personal mission, yielded an evidence supported program designed to provide comfort, support and confidence to every student we meet. The "Legends Program" is an interactive program that includes an introduction to mental health and related topics such as public stigma, self stigma, the determinants of mental health, individual storytelling, and small breakout groups.
Our initial programs focused on students, but over the past two years we have seen our reach grow to educate faculty/staff and parents with our program. As we have expanded our programs to many local high schools, we realize that many mental health challenges which we have uncovered in high school begin at home, and parents and family members are often the first to notice a child/teen suffering. Our parent workshop aims to help parents get more comfortable helping their teen on their mental health journey. Inside the program we help parents identify signs of mental illness in their teens, connect parents to mental health resources and help parents access these resources and provide tips and strategies on how to have a conversation with their teen.
Connecting parents, staff members, and students creates a more holistic approach to mental health education which benefits the schools and the community. Our programs are incredibly interactive. What makes the JCK Foundation unique is the relatability to students and authenticity. We don't just talk about honesty, vulnerability, and resources, we show students how we've concepts in our own lives. We extend this authenticity with our parent program where we include a personal story from the community about their lived mental health experience with their child and we then dive into identifying crisis, non-crisis, and developmental situations.
The JCK Foundation's faculty training helps faculty members support student mental health needs as well as their own. Through our program, we aim to cultivate an environment where faculty feel valued, accepted, and motivated to make a positive impact on their own wellness and that of their peers and their students. We also work hand-in-hand with each school to connect faculty to local mental wellness resources, and to provide faculty with tools and strategies to have conversations with their students and with each other about mental health. The hour-long workshop aims to teach faculty how to recognize signs of mental illness in their students, talk with students one-on-one about mental health, and refer students to mental health resources as needed. It also focuses on showing faculty how to create positive environments in their classrooms where mental health is normalized and students feel comfortable having discussions about mental health.
Our organization has impacted more people each year since its inception. Between 2019 and 2020, the foundation presented at schools 33 times, in 2021 we conducted 39 presentations, in 2022 that number grew to 57 presentations, and in 2023, we completed over 95 school presentations at 63 different schools. In just these past 12 months, we have reached over 20,000 students, 700 faculty, and 100 parents.
