Sources of Strength is a best-practice youth wellness program designed to harness the power of peer social networks to support mental health, healthy relationships and listening skills, emotional regulation practice, and proactive prevention of bullying. The mission of Sources of Strength is to support students’ wellbeing by promoting strategies that will increase their coping skills, resiliency, and help-seeking behaviors, and strengthen connections between peers and trusted adults. Sources of Strength moves beyond a singular focus on risk factors and warning signs by focusing on hope, help, and strength for all students. This upstream model strengthens multiple sources of support (protective factors) around young individuals so that when times get hard they have strengths to rely on. 

Sources of Strength at Windsor Charter Academy

Elementary School

Sources of Strength Elementary is a Tier 1 universal curriculum for all students grades K-5. The focus is on mental health, healthy relationships and listening skills, emotional regulation practice, and proactive prevention of bullying. Lessons are designed to be approximately 30 minutes in length and delivered once a week. Every lesson incorporates a Talking Circle where students are invited to think, share, and practice building healthy relationships and listening skills as we learn from diverse perspectives. Lessons are interactive with games, emotional regulation practice, and creative expression designed to: increase student and adult connections with one another, invite students to identify the Strengths (protective factors) they have in their lives that help them through life’s ups and downs, develop understanding of how our brain and body communicate to help us regulate, and increase emotional vocabulary.

Middle School & High School

At the secondary level, Sources of Strength employs a radically strength-based approach to harness the power of peer social networks to support mental health, emotional regulation, proactive prevention of bullying, and suicide prevention. The program focuses on developing and enhancing youth protective factors using a model that utilizes diversely influential students. These students become Peer Leaders who are empowered to leverage their social influence as an agent of change in their school, using the power of their social networks to spread messages of hope, help, and strength. They work closely with trusted Adult Advisors, attending training and regularly scheduled meetings to develop and push out strategic messaging to the student body. Using an active learning model, the campaign messaging explores the eight protective factors, depicted in the Sources of Strength wheel, to develop resilient individuals and communities.