![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/mbkcares001-copy-1024x683.jpg\")
Around 30 young people participated in MBK Cares\u2019 summer programs this year. The organization teaches young people generally ages 13-19 emotional regulation and mental health skills through golf and chess. (Photo credit: TJDDN)<\/p>\nNormalizing mental health awareness at an early age<\/p>\n
Through its summer youth mentorship programs, which use chess and golf to teach emotional regulation and mental health awareness to young people ages 13 to 19, MBK Cares is starting the conversation about mental health at a young age, Hines said.<\/p>\n
Young people are also encouraged to express themselves through painting, photography and poetry, and journal each day in a workbook titled, \u201cHow are You?\u201d designed by mental health advocate Francesca Reicherter.<\/p>\n
Hines said just taking that time to reflect can help young people connect more with themselves and their emotions. It also provides tools that \u201ctranslate directly into therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can normalize a pattern of talking about how you think and you feel inside, you can normalize the conversation about mental health when you\u2019re an adult,\u201d he said. \u201cAs a teenager, you try to be cool or to be careful, but if you learn as a kid how to talk and be yourself, then maybe as a teenager, it\u2019ll become easier, and that may actually help your adult relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kautz said building trust with young people, as Hines does through MBK Cares, is invaluable in suicide prevention and mental health awareness.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is really, really hard to even talk to the closest people in your life about suicide risk,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think that the work that he\u2019s done has been really excellent to just really spend time with these kids, take the time to really get to know them, to get to know their struggles, to get to know their hobbies, their joys. And I think he\u2019s done a really awesome job of starting to really build that trust.\u201d<\/p>\n
Around 30 young people participated in MBK Cares\u2019 summer programs this year. The organization teaches young people generally ages 13-19 emotional regulation and mental health skills through golf and chess. (Photo credit: TJDDN)<\/p>\n
Each of the approximately 30 young people who participated in the chess and golf programs this summer can in turn impact others, Hines said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that what we\u2019re doing can save families,\u201d he said. \u201cI think not only can it save lives from self harm or harm of others, but it may actually help people to forgive one another and sustain families, help relationships last, maybe sustain or develop marriages like just all kinds of things, or even launch people into careers that they may not have been thinking about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salahudeen Salam, 14, participated in MBKCares\u2019 summer program for the second time this year. He said besides having fun learning chess and golf, the program has helped him talk to people about his feelings more often.<\/p>\n
Salam, who is starting ninth grade next week, said he often feels pressure to act a certain way because of his appearance. Due to his height, he said that many people assume he is an adult.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt impacted me on a lot of things, like how to deal with disappointment, how to make other people feel better,\u201d he said. \u201cHow to, you know, talk to myself when I need to talk to myself, how to talk to somebody, how to write in a journal. Writing in a journal is helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salam said his favorite lesson from this year: \u201cThere\u2019s no wrong way to be creative.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Normalizing mental health awareness at an early age Through its summer youth mentorship programs, which use chess and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[77924,97,77925,259,260,77926],"class_list":{"0":"post-121587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-black-mental-health","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-kids-and-mental-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth","13":"tag-philly-suburbs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}