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Facts About the Mental Health Crisis and Our Response 

Our 60 second PSA: https://youtu.be/LKYA6nlK0C8

Huge numbers of America’s children and their parents are now dealing with critical levels of anxiety, depression, or disorientation as outcome of the pandemic. Child development experts are predicting long-term emotional and developmental problems for many millions of these children.

EQuip Our Kids! is tackling this mental health emergency in two ways, but we need your help.

Here are the harsh facts for many of America’s 78 million families with children under 18.

• A survey by Global Strategy Group found 50% of parents saying their kids are overstressed and hurting.

• 80% of the parents said they are over-stressed by the painful reality of juggling work or no work, financial pressures, and home-confined children.
• The Census Bureau reported in July that a record 34% of adults show signs of clinical depression or anxiety.  
• During the Great Recession, a 5% increase in the national unemployment rate correlated with an astounding 35% to 50% increase in “clinically meaningful childhood mental-health problems,” according to a study published in Health Economics.

“We’re going to see increased stress-related cognitive impairment and diseases,” says Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, California’s Surgeon General and a pediatrician.  “Decades of studies tell us that the kind of trauma and stress many children are experiencing… will lead to more children with developmental delays, asthma, diabetes, mental illness, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and other poor health outcomes.”

These kids and families need all the help we can give because government aid is little and slow, and counselors and psychologists can only assist a small minority of troubled children and families – mostly those who can afford them.

Lacking such professional help. U.S domestic violence rates are up 20% on average from an already appalling level of 24 victims a minute. Mothers are particularly victims. Breakups and divorces have increased 30%-50%, piling even more pressure on parents felt by their children.

There is a major way to help change this, though few parents know about it.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) training, which educators call Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), provenly has a profound positive effect on mental health, on child and youth behaviors, and on academic success.

This life skills teaching provides kids of all ages the ability to deal with their feelings, thoughts and relationships with others in a healthy caring and productive way. Backed by independent studies, many thousands of SEL educators, want to see all Pre-K-12 schools include SEL in their curriculum, and most homes adopt its practices.

EQuip Our Kids! is a nonprofit working with many educators and SEL organizations to further comprehensive SEL adoption in all pre-K-12 schools. And we’re addressing the current emotional and mental health emergency in two ways:

• First, we curated and seek wide distribution for our free Parent and Children Emotional Survival Toolkit, which offers the best emotional and mental health home-help available from credible sources like Sesame Street, PBS, NBC, universities and recognized learning experts. These are videos, games, apps and written materials to help children and parents manage the emotional, mental health and relationship stresses of the moment, with long-term positive effects. Kaiser Health Care and LA City Youth and Family units are among those co-promoting the Toolkit to their stakeholders.

• Second, in pro bono service to several SEL nonprofit organizations, we actively promote, via social-media and advertising, adoption of EQ training in schools and homes for its ability to develop children who can manage whatever life throws at them and build successful lives for themselves. The lack of parent and public awareness of this learning leaves SEL program providers and educators struggling to get this teaching into schools and into homes via online teaching. They need our help.

Your donation will allow us to:

• Promote and deliver our proven free Toolkit and other information about at-home and in-school EQ training to thousands of U.S. parent organizations, who can share it with their members.
• Educate local media outlets across the country about the current crisis and available resources, so that they can inform their viewers.
• Work with major employers to inform their customers and employees about these resources and EQ training, as Kaiser Health Care and others have.
• Support education organizations focused on implementing EQ training in physical and online classrooms.

We know there are lots of calls on everyone’s donation abilities. We ask that everyone consider the need to minimize the damage to this generation of children – for their sakes short and long term.  And for society’s need to optimize and not allow to degenerate the mental and physical health of its children and youths.  

The Big Picture

Every tax-deductible dollar you donate will speed along the enormous benefits of extending emotional and social intelligence (EQ) learning into all schools beyond the 10%-15% that currently provide it in a comprehensive manner – and flourish from it. It will also help insure that this and the next generations of children don’t replicate the low EQ pain and mistakes of the past and currently. individually and societally.

Donations of any size can be made above by credit card or PayPal, or you can send a check to Earthways/BEQC at 20178 Rockport Way, Malibu, CA. 90265.

Donations primarily support the marketing costs of our sorely-needed national EQuip Our Kids! awareness and mobilization campaign targeted at parents and the general public, who barely know this remarkably effective learning exists. Consequently, there’s little parent demand for this learning in our schools. The more you donate, the more people, including decision makers and potential business messenger partners, we can reach.

We do not provide the learning tools and programs  – a great number of small businesses and nonprofits independent of us do. Started by four business leaders with a history of philanthropy targeted at youth development, our goal is to upgrade youth development immensely by making EQuip Our Kids! a national cause promoted by parents, businesses, communities, organizations and individuals.

“I am happy to endorse the campaign because this is something we’ve needed for a long time.“
–Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti