This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and we're proud that our work helps to keep kids healthy – body and mind – through the nutritious food they make and the many creative things they get up to at our sessions.
But our work goes beyond our after-school workshops, and sometimes the adults also benefit from the work of our members.
Curiouser and curiouser...
At the end of last year, we partnered with Beamish Museum and the University of Northumbria on a project called Dovetails, which you can read more about in our earlier blog post.
Our Cowgate members worked together to make a wooden bench with carved panels, one of which included the names of all the men that have been part of the Beamish Men's Group over the past five years.
A few months later, we received this lovely message from Michelle Kindleysides, Head of Health and Wellbeing at Beamish Museum, who we worked with on the project.
"As well as being thoroughly enjoyed and sat on by our Men's Group, it has also become a really special place for family members of some of the men who have sadly passed away over the years; a place for them to come together as a family, to sit together in a place where their relative enjoyed being and to share stories and fond memories."
Michelle went on:
"Just the other week the family of one of our members came to the cottage after he had sadly passed away. This gentleman had been a participant in the group since it first started in 2014, and he and his family were very special to us all here.
"He was too poorly to be involved in the Dovetails project but he'd really enjoyed the woodwork projects that we did beforehand. His wife, sons, daughter and grandchildren were all really pleased to be able to come to the cottage and to see where he used to come every week.
"John, one of our volunteers, then took them to see the bench. They were really overwhelmed by it and thought it was such a lovely thing to have here; they felt really privileged to be able to have such a lovely thing for them here at the museum.
"So a really REALLY big thank you to all the kids at Kids Kabin for making this, and making such a difference to our participants, past and present, and their families!"
It's wonderful feedback like this that makes our collaborative work so special and important. We couldn't be more proud of our members in Cowgate who were part of this very impactful project.
If you'd like to work together with Kids Kabin on a project for our young members, please do get in touch. And thank you Michelle for such moving feedback! It was a pleasure to be involved.
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