OpenIDEO Austin Go Love Now Project

## Inspiration - OpenIDEO creates challenges for cities across the world to solve. This year, the OpenIDEO Austin Chapter created a unique local partnership with ATX Hack For Change to tackle the OpenIDEO BridgeBuilder Challenge. Our focus is on The GoLoveNow project, an idea submitted to the challenge from our community.

GoLoveNow Project Students have lost a sense of self-love and are filled with self doubt. This declining belief in personal ability was witnessed over the past eleven years as a college professor. Once this was noticed, through research and experimentation, it was realized that the most effective time to teach/reinforce self-love is during middle school, since the students are very malleable and looking to define themselves at this point in their lives.

## What it does - Builds a culture of self-love, compassion and kindness which can spread from schools to communities and beyond.

## How I built it - The program began with a simple motivational assembly for students that was pro-love, rather than anti-bullying or anti-anything for that matter. Over a three year span, we have added teacher trainings, counselor trainings, parent assemblies, general student body curriculum, a Champions program (for student leaders), and student development videos.

## Challenges I ran into - Some teachers have resisted the program because they are not emotionally capable to look at their own lack of emotional development, so it's hard for them to address a student's emotional needs. Others resist because they see it as more work. Counselors love the program initially, since they see the value in teaching emotional management, but following the awakening assembly some get overwhelmed. Since there is roughly a 300-1 ratio (counselor to student) and they cannot handle the onslaught of work, they sometimes pull back in their support. A handful of parents have also complained because they feel that only religion can teach the meaning of love. Students overall love the program.

## Accomplishments that I'm proud of - We have intercepted multiple students from suicide attempts, reduced school bullying and simply, changed thousands of lives by assisting with their emotional management.

## What I learned- This is a massive undertaking that will likely take many partnerships and cannot be done alone by one organization.

## What's next for Demo- To expand the program in schools both locally and globally.