Trinity Lands helps GoodYarn
$100,000 Boost for Rural Wellbeing
GoodYarn is an evidence-based, peer-delivered, mental health literacy programme for workplaces, both rural and urban, that enables people to talk about mental health. The first step in addressing mental health in the workplace is being able to talk about it.
Trinity Lands wanted to give rural wellbeing a major boost with a $100,000 donation for the GoodYarn mental health programme. The funding was awarded at Trinity Lands’ 2021 annual dinner.
“We know the importance of good mental health and we love what the GoodYarn workshop does to help ordinary Kiwis.”
Peter McBride
CEO, Trinity Lands
GoodYarns beginnings
GoodYarn began in the Deep South in 2014, and has since spread nationwide. GoodYarn workshops help participants to know the signs and symptoms of common mental illnesses, build confidence to identify mental distress, talk about it, and know how and where to get help.
It’s unique in its peer-led approach and original focus on the rural community, and more than 10,000 people have now been part of one of these workshops.
Help and counselling for on-farm support
Igor tells a story of a bank manager who called him soon after completing GoodYarn training to say he had just seen a client who had displayed many of the distress signs he’d been taught to identify. Igor happened to be in the very town where that farmer lived and within 10 minutes he was in his farm gate. It turned out the farmer had made a decision to kill himself at the back of the farm at 2pm that day, but Igor’s perfectly-timed visit and offer to help led to the farmer and his family getting counselling and on-farm support. The bank manager’s training to identify warning signs of mental stress saved the farmer’s life.