Uberheroes - My Origin Story

Who we are.

Hope 4 Life NI, a Northern Ireland charity, delivers early intervention programmes designed, and proven, to strengthen resilience & well-being and support positive mental health.  

Since 2016 we have delivered Uberheroes®, which uses true stories of young people's adverse experiences retold in superhero comic form and presented in interactive facilitated sessions to empower children and young people to help themselves to good emotional and mental health

We've worked with more than 15,000 pupils in over 150 schools, with very positive outcomes for pupils well-being, covering topics identified as important by young people like: Cyber-bullying, Self-harm, Addictions, Abandonment, Abuse, Homelessness, Bereavement, and many more.  

Children and young people have been very positive about Uberheroes

What we're Crowdfunding for.

The transition process from primary to secondary school in Northern Ireland is recognised as a very stressful process for pupils.  Multiple tests, in unfamiliar locations, long waits for results and decisions on what schools pupils will go to in Year 8 all play a part in that.    Our own research confirmed this; through surveys  completed by young people we discovered the following at key points in the transition process.

Surely we can do better than this for our kids!

Our response, Uberheroes®-My Origin Story, will aim to empower children through transition to build resilience, strengthen their well-being and promote good mental health. Your help is absolutely crucial to get this programme up and running. 

The £10,000 raised through this appeal will help us to be able to support children during the transition period in our unique way and will pay for the design, creation and printing of workbooks for each child we work with. Workbooks that will be their own personalised companion through the transition process. The more we raise beyond that, the more we will be able to do for the pupils.

Uberheroes®-My Origin Story - The Pilot 

 Based on all we have learnt, building on the experience we have acquired and liaising with a number of P 6, P7 & Yr 8 teachers, Vice-Principals and Principals we are launching an exciting and innovative 2 year pilot later this year which will initially support up to 3,000 children per year as they prepare for and navigate this challenging period.  It will focus on areas like self-esteem, self-confidence, handling stress and anxiety in school and home, improving resilient thinking, mindfulness, perceived expectation levels & navigating disappointment and perceived failure. Eventually this programme will roll out, like Uberheroes® has done, to be available to any school, but the initial 2 year pilot will establish it with P 6, P 7 and Yr 8 pupils across 40-50 schools. 

Our existing team will continue to deliver Uberheroes® and offer support to the Uberheroes®-My Origin Story programme, but we will assemble a new team to drive this forward, and the stretch funding we hope to raise through this campaign will go a long way towards helping achieve this.

 Your support is vital to make this a reality, together we can make a real difference for our children and young people.

How do we know Uberheroes is effective?

We have already worked with around 15,000 children and young people, and have seen the impact Uberheroes has. Teachers have described our work as sympathetic, sensitive and compassionate providing an engaging, interactive & safe platform giving pupils greater confidence to ask relevant questions and to explore key areas in more detail. 

   From the outset, the Integrated sector were the first schools to work with the programme, proving their willingness to be innovative and to think outside the box. From the highest level they have underpinned the need for and the value of Uberheroes®.

Uberheroes®  has now been successfully rolled out across every education sector in Northern Ireland, and we have listened to the young people at every stage.

We have addressed many areas identified by young people as issues that negatively affect their mental health and in using  Real Stories have empowered those young people to see how their difficult experiences can help others while also impacting thousands of children to recognise that their peers have come through some of the very things they too are facing and have not just survived but, with the right help, thrived.  

Over the last few months, during lock down we continued to listen, recognising the need for what we do was even greater than usual. We connected online with over 6,000 children and young people, families and teachers to help them explore their thoughts on the pandemic and how they were responding to it, parents commented that this process really helped them discuss the issues with their children. 

The kids wrote about their experiences of lock down, created villains to represent the virus, new Uberheroes to represent the NHS and how to fight against Covid-19 and they created a 20 page comic imaginatively creating a story which expressed their thoughts, emotions and feelings during Lock down.

Teachers and parents have also written positively of their experience of Uberheroes®, take a look at some of these below, and find more at https://uberheroes.co.uk/reviews-comments/

In everything we do we are determined to encourage open discussions about the issues faced by kids, we are guided through really listening to them and allowing their voices to matter and be heard. We are also committed to resourcing  and  equipping parents and teachers, to support them as they support the children. . 

The positive testimonies from pupils, parents and teachers have all underlined how our work has built resilience, supported positive mental health and given children and young people an opportunity to be heard. 

Uberheroes: My Origin Story will continue in this vein, and your support will be absolutely vital!