HeartSmart is a primary school resource that is currently in development. It seeks to build resilience, emotional intelligence and active empathy in the hearts of children. I’m currently running sessions in schools to pilot it but it will culminate in a product that schools can purchase to sit alongside their current PSHE education. So ultimately the teachers will be the deliverers of it, with films and a host of teaching resources for them to use and the option for training should they desire.

There are 5 basic principles to HeartSmart that all seek to build up the heart of the child (and teacher!) In Proverbs it says, ‘As water reflects the face so one's life reflects the heart.’ The life of our heart affects the whole of our life. Here are the 5 principles:

Open up to Open Arms - love yourself. You are loved, because of that you can love yourself. And there’s much to love about you. You can’t love others unless you love yourself and it can be hard to love yourself unless you know that you’re loved. (In faith schools we can teach that God loves them, in other schools we’ll work on building a love map of all the people who show love to them).

Too Much Selfie Isn’t Healthy - love others. There are 7.3billion other people on the earth and they are all important too. How can we show love to them. It’s better to give than to receive, living for contribution to others is far more rewarding and fulfilling than living for ourselves.

Don’t Rub It In, Rub It Out - forgiveness. When we get hurt we want to rub it in, get someone in trouble, hold onto the hurt but that ends up hurting us. Forgiveness is the best gift we can give ourselves. Sometimes we need to go on a journey of how we process pain, but we certainly cant hold onto it. We also need to forgive ourselves.

Fake is a Mistake - live with integrity and tell the truth. Sometimes lying can seem like the best option but in the end it creates loneliness. Have the courage to tell the truth, even if that means you get in trouble, it’s better than not being trusted or getting found out. It’s also about integrity, boundaries in relationship and being true to yourself. You don’t need to fear the truth, love always sides with truth.

No Way Through isn’t True! - There’s always a way through, there’s always a solution. Sometimes we face situations that seem impossible but when we don’t believe there’s a solution we don’t search for it. Believing there’s a way out is the first step towards finding the best thing to do next. To put it another way, hope. Love always hopes, always trusts, always perseveres, love never fails. No way through isn’t true, love shows us the way for ourselves and others.

I’ve been piloting HeartSmart in a couple of year groups at St Marks Primary School in Wigan. It’s been useful to trial the language, see what connects, what doesn’t, what to keep, how to adjust, what to discard.

I'm choosing to partner with Visible Ministries and develop HeartStrong under its banner for 12 months. Visible Ministries is an incredible charity that tackles some of the issues we face here in the UK. It has been very successfully running 'Naked Truth' for 2 years which is a project speaking into the issue of porn. Heartstrong will be a separate project, run by me under the banner of Visible. I started in July and am also hoping to develop school resources for Naked Truth in the latter half of this time.  Visible Ministries will become a 50% stakeholder in HeartSmart school resources, with me retaining 50% ownership. Because Visible Ministries don't have the funds to house a project like this right now I'm asking you to consider supporting this work. I truly believe it could have enormous and very timely impact for the whole of UK and beyond. If you can give even just a little, that will make such a difference. Thank you.

Dave

For more info on Visible Ministries visit www.visibleministries.com

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