“Messages of Hope”project.
CAPS invites our whole campus community to:
- identify day to day messages of hope that help us when we are in a crisis
- reflect back those messages – to each other and make them available to us
- show how to use these messages of hope to become roads of resiliency
This effort is in the larger ongoing do something campaign, started in 2007, in which CAPS encourages the whole campus community to engage in student mental heatlh support – whether it’s helping a student in a faculty/staff role, helping yourself as a student, or helping a friend, roommate, classmate. Even if you don’t know exactly what to do – do something. And, ‘do’ – it’s great to have awareness and knowledge and a value of helping and the desire to help but it’s not enough – we HAVE TO ACT. In effect, we are strengthening our “community of caring” that includes CAPS and other mental health professional agencies and people who are not mental health professionals – in short, ALL OF US.
In 2012-2013, CAPS engaged students in the Messages of Hope project as part of our do something: Stop Student Suicide campgain. Students wrote supportive messages on wooden tiles, aimed at reaching out to those who may be struggling with suicide. The collection of tiles is now permanently displayed on the outer wall of CAPS . This video captures the Messages of Hope project, and features Michigan recording artist Brian Vander Ark (solo artist and lead singer of The Verve Pipe). Vander Ark has generously donated his song "The Heart that Keeps You" to use in this video.