The packages helping to bring mental health awareness to Manitoba hockey teams

A Canadian charity is sending packages to youth hockey teams in Manitoba to help bring mental health awareness to coaches and players.A Canadian charity is sending packages to youth hockey teams in Manitoba to help bring mental health awareness to coaches and players.

Buddy Check for Jesse is sending out more than 750 coaches packs to every under-11 to under-18 team involved with Hockey Manitoba. The packs include sample talks for the coaches to deliver to the players, stickers, bag tags and wallet cards.

The packs also include the charity’s green stick tape.

“After their talk, the kids are asked to tape their stick with green in outward support of understanding,” said Robyn Vandersteen, the Manitoba ambassador for Buddy Check for Jesse.

Vandersteen said that teaching young kids about mental health is more important than ever.

“Just start them young, destigmatize it, make it a normal conversation. Make it just as normal as a broken arm is,” she said in an interview on Thursday.

Buddy Check for Jesse was created to honour the memory of Jesse Short-Gershman, who died by suicide in 2014.

The B.C.-based charity focuses on educating and empowering coaches to bring mental health awareness to players. It also destigmatizes mental illness diagnoses; recognizes the important role that coaches play in the lives of young people; and helps players understand that support is available when it comes to mental health.

“We help facilitate the conversation between the coaches and their players around their mental health. We help to destigmatize,” Vandersteen said.

Buddy Check for Jesse currently focuses on the hockey world, but the charity organizers are working to expand the program to other sports, including soccer and volleyball.

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