At 11am on Friday 10 May, thousands of Australian primary school students took 15 minutes out of their day towards mindfulness.
The global event, called A Mindful Moment, was organised by ClassDojo, a classroom communication app used in over 50% of Australian primary schools.
The event started in Australia and finished in Hawaii 20 hours later, passing through around 180 countries. ClassDojo released new mindfulness lessons each day the following week, prolonging the impact of this positive initiative.
Pesel & Car began working with ClassDojo in February this year to help highlight the excellent work they do building education communities in Australia.
As part of our work, we implemented a program of media relations to generate coverage for A Mindful Moment, in turn helping to raise awareness of growing concerns around mental wellbeing issues amongst young Australians.
Whilst it may be polemical to suggest we’ve reached the point of an epidemic, increasing levels of anxiety in Australian schools have been well documented and governments are taking notice.
The NSW Government pledged $1.2 million during the recent state election to roll out a mindfulness program, whilst Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews hinted his government could extend to primary schools their $51.2 million initiative to place psychologists, social workers and mental wellbeing nurses into every secondary school in the state.
In April, ClassDojo carried out a mental wellbeing and mindfulness survey with 1,047 families and 891 teachers in Australia, which revealed that:
- 75% of parents and 98% of teachers say students experience anxiety during the school day
- 63% of parents and 64% of teachers say learning how to manage feelings of anxiety is now equally as important as schoolwork – and 31% of parents and 32% of teachers say it’s even more important
- 67% of parents practise mindfulness with their child at home:
- Of those who do, 96% say it has been beneficial for their child
- Top benefits include:
- Better at handling emotions: 63%
- Calmer: 42%
- Less anxious: 42%
- Happier: 36%
A worldwide initiative on this scale required a collaborative, global effort to communicate the powerful messages that ClassDojo was seeking to deliver.
Pesel & Carr worked collaboratively across multiple time zones with ClassDojo’s internal team and communications agencies in the US and UK to implement media campaigns that hit home.
Attracting the attention of journalists who were focused on the twists and turns of an eventful federal election campaign required a multi-layered approach, ensuring every possible angle was covered and every platform catered for.
Quality content was the key to success.
We created multiple press releases with localised angles, a survey one-pager with key take homes and a broadcast briefing, as well as a video news release filmed the morning of the first mindfulness lesson.
Identifying local teachers taking part in the initiative was also an essential ingredient for success, as it was teachers who could share their experiences and schools that could provide those cute picture opportunities that can make or break a story.
We found a partner school for the day and we’re hugely grateful to St. Peter’s Catholic Primary School in Sunshine West for allowing us to film and snap the mindful activities.
Primary school teachers are naturally excellent storytellers, which made capturing engaging content easy.
With the large media companies constantly trimming their operations in cost-cutting moves, broadcasters and publishers no longer have the resources to send film crews, photographers and reporters to cover every story that lands on their desk.
This makes it essential for public relations agencies to have content production capabilities to fill in the gaps and produce content that caters to all platforms. Particularly in a country as big as Australia geographically.
The campaign successfully generated over 50 pieces of media coverage across online, print and broadcast in the US, UK and Australia, including 20 pieces of media coverage in Australia alone. A Mindful Moment featured in The Daily Telegraph amongst other outlets.
More importantly, A Mindful Moment conveyed the message that help is out there for tackling anxiety and boosting mental wellbeing.
And if we’re to stand any chance of reversing those shocking statistics over time, primary schools would be a good place to start.
