December 21, 2023 – WPDI has launched a new educational initiative in the greater Los Angeles area called Inner Spark. Its aim is to empower students with leadership skills and equip them with tools to serve as peer-to-peer leaders and support each other in promoting Transformative Social-Emotional Learning (T-SEL).
We launched Inner Spark in September. It is an ongoing program that has already trained 37 students from Hawkins High School, and 21 from various high schools across Anaheim Unified High School District. The scaling potential of this program is much larger as this is a peer-to-peer mentoring program and these trained students can assist their peers throughout the rest of the year. This is the domino effect that WPDI aims to create through our Peacebuilding programs around the world in the framework of our Youth Peacemaker Network.
Inner Spark trains high school students using a WPDI-created curriculum so they can serve as supporters of their fellow students and offer their peers tools to deal with anxiety, building healthy relationships, and trauma. It is designed to help them manage emotions, life events, stress, and bring awareness to issues such as conflict, trauma, and healing. Inner Spark is for students at the high school level.
The program has been designed with components:
Part 1: Understanding Me
Part 2: Building Healthy Relationships
Part 3: Building Community
Local teachers have outlined how the program will help them overcome widespread issues with mental well-being among their students. “Inner Spark is a one-of-a-kind program that allows students to be with themselves in a way that builds the capacity of resiliency and transformation. Students will leave this program with a skill set that can easily be shared. There has been a significant increase in our youth feeling overwhelmed, challenged, and traumatized for a variety of reasons. Inner Spark mentors are emerging at the perfect time because they will have the mind tools, and skills to lead, and will have grown the capacity for compassion. This combination makes them a powerful asset in the pursuit of peace and mental wellness,” explained Ms. Nielsen, an educator at AUHSD.
Through this program, we train youth leaders with tools to build their own resilience capacity in addressing the countless of personal challenges that we all encounter, such as stress, negative thinking, trauma, and grief, and offer tools to help build healthy rapport to their social environment. The broader goal is also to empower young people to become drivers of positive change in their communities.
In partnership with
