Kelowna startup brings empowerment to community’s youth – KelownaNow

Mental health is one of the biggest issues facing youth in Canada.

According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, suicide accounts for 24% of all deaths among 15-24 year olds.

Teachers, counselors and parents trying to help youth are often facing their own challenges with heavy workloads, lack of resources and time constraints.

Nine Rising is a Kelowna based start up that provides consulting programs and services in schools, businesses and organizations with the goal of educating and empowering the community to be more inclusive and build safe spaces for all persons to thrive.

Nine Risings CEO and founder Kathleen MacKinnon became interested in mental health and youth empowerment while in high school and studied Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta before moving to Kelowna to start Nine Rising.

There is this very large communication gap, between youth and their parents, counselors and teachers, said the 23-year-old Mackinnon.

Some of it is resources, like schools not being able to provide enough counselors or teachers and parents being so busy. Some of it also generational, sometimes youth dont feel comfortable opening up to adults, sometimes they feel adults won't properly understand issues specific to youth today, like pressures and expectations surrounding social media.

Nine Rising now runs courses and workshops adapted to middle and secondary schools for character education and empowerment. The workshops cover a range of topics including self-esteem and self-advocacy, healthy relationships, conflict resolution, gender roles and stereotypes, mental health and social media and safety.

We spend so much time taking our kids to soccer, we spend so much time making sure their grades are great, and now we're realizing there's this crisis in regards to mental health, explained MacKinnon.

Every parent-youth relationship enters this stage after elementary school, where issues start arising around scary topics like relationships, mental health, drinking and drugs, or addiction and all that stuff, its very personal.

To help facilitate these topics that become tough conversations between youth and parents, Nine Rising is creating an app called Ekanary.

Ekanary provides parents with the education, the resources and a place for parents to share with other parents so they know they aren't alone, said Mackinnon.

"Its about providing tools and conversation starters on many different subjects so parents are able to go and have powerful conversations with their youth to better understand whats going on in their youths world, where they're at and how they can support."

The backing for Nine Risings app came from Kelownas annual Start Up Okanagan weekend, which is a global grassroots movement where entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures come together.

The events are 54-hours long where developers, designers, marketers, product managers, and startup enthusiasts alike come together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch startups.

I came to Okanagan Start Up Weekend in 2015 with this concept for Nine Rising and our app, said Mackinnon. It was a bit rougher around the edges at the time but we pitched it and actually ended up winning the weekend, which provided Nine Rising with an office space at the Centre for Innovation, a mentorship with Accelerate Okanagan. I've had so much community support for the project, its been very inspiring.

In her free time, Mackinnon volunteers at HOPE Outreach Okanagan and teaches yoga.

This July, Nine Rising, HOPE Outreach and Lululemon Athletica will come together to host an event for Nine Rising's BA project with proceeds going to HOPE Outreach and their goal of supporting homeless and exploited women in the Kelowna Area.

You can stay up to date with the BA project and get in touch Nine Rising by clicking here.

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Kelowna startup brings empowerment to community's youth - KelownaNow