Resilient Ararat

About Resilient Ararat

Resilient Ararat is a school-led approach to promoting positive mental and emotional health and wellbeing among students and the wider community. The project supports the implementation of The Resilience Project curriculum in participating schools across Ararat Rural City and promotes positive community engagement with mental and emotional health.

Through the development of specialised projects and activities, Resilient Ararat helps reinforce the important work schools are undertaking with students throughout the local community.

Resilient Ararat’s first major project was bringing The Resilience Project’s Martin Heppell to Ararat in February 2020. Over 1000 students, 250 school staff and youth workers and almost 500 community members attended one of six sessions Martin delivered over his three-day visit. In his presentations, Martin spoke about the three principles that The Resilience Project is based on; gratitude, empathy and mindfulness, more affectionately known as GEM! As a result, GEM has been a key focus of Resilient Ararat’s activities to date.

Founding schools: Ararat College, Ararat 800 Primary, Ararat West Primary, Moyston Primary, St Mary’s Primary, Pomonal Primary, Willaura Primary, Maroona Primary, Buangor Primary.

Current cluster schools: Ararat College, Ararat West Primary, St Mary’s Primary, Willaura Primary, Maroona Primary.

Paying it Forward – Kindness in a Cup

Resilient Ararat has joined forces with two local cafes to spread caffeine and kindness throughout the
community. Paying it Forward – Kindness in a Cup launched in September 2024, providing customers at Fred and Bet’s and Forager’s cafes with the opportunity to pre-purchase a hot drink for someone who could use a little extra happiness in their day.

As part of the ongoing initiative, Resilient Ararat has supplied both cafes with Kindness in a Cup cards
which can be bought for the price of a coffee or hot chocolate. The cards will be kept safe by café
staff who will randomly selected customers to surprise with a free hot drink throughout the day.

You may never meet the recipient of your kindness, but you will get joy from knowing your generosity brought a smile to someone else’s face.

Virtual Gratitude Wall

In October 2025, we launched The Positive Postie Project Virtual Gratitude Wall to allow the entire community to experience the benefits of practicing gratitude! We encourage you to use this virtual gratitude wall to acknowledge and celebrate local businesses, sporting clubs, community groups or individuals who are doing great things.

Mental Health Month

Each year, Resilient Ararat develops a new campaign to mark Mental Health Month. We work with students from our cluster schools to design a campaign concept, branding elements and social media content. The campaign is rolled out in the community each October.

Our campaigns:

[Click each image to learn more about our previous Mental Health Month campaigns]

2025: The Positive Postie Project

The Positive Postie Project was a kindness-based wellbeing initiative that encouraged the whole community to practice gratitude. The campaign was widely promoted through navy ‘grateful’ caps which were dropped at parks, sporting facilities and other landmarks for community members to find.

Participating schools were provided with free campaign resources, including branded notepads and Positive Postie boxes to inspire students to write kind, uplifting notes to their peers, teachers and school staff. Local businesses were also invited to get involved in the campaign with their staff.

2024: October Stick to it Challenge

The Stick to it Challenge encouraged participants to compete with friends, family, colleagues and classmates to complete 31 wellbeing activities and random acts of kindness during the month of October. The tasks were developed by a group of local students and were collated into an official Stick to It Challenge sheet. All students from Resilient Ararat’s cluster schools were provided with a challenge sheet and a set of stickers they could place over the tasks as they completed them. Community members were also invited to participate by collecting their free challenge resources from Central Grampians LLEN or Ararat Gallery TAMA.

2023: Grow Happiness

Our Grow Happiness campaign provided participating schools and businesses with seeded cards they could plant at home. The four card designs were each embedded with a different variety of plant seed and featured questions to spark community conversation around positive mental health. Community members were encouraged to share their answers to the seed card questions on social media. They could then plant the cards in a pot or garden by following the instructions on the back. Participation from the community allowed the online conversations around positive mental health, and the seeds, to grow throughout the month of October.

2022: Painting the Town with Gratitude

Painting the Town with Gratitude coincided with the launch of our Resilience Art Trail. Replicas of the art panels were on display at Ararat Gallery TAMA and a gratitude wall was set up so visitors could add positive messages or drawings. Resilient Ararat also provided schools and community members with special greeting cards that prompted them to let a friend, colleague, teacher or loved one know all the reasons they are appreciated.

2021: Random Acts of Kindness in the Rat

Random Acts of Kindness in the Rat emphasised the importance of practicing empathy through kindness by encouraging Ararat residents to complete a random act of kindness for a friend or stranger. One thousand ‘kindness calling cards’ were widely distributed to create a ‘pay it forward’ movement of kindness throughout the week. People who received a calling card were encouraged to complete a random act of kindness for somebody else and pass the card on to keep kindness circulating.

2020: Bean Resilient

The aim of the #beanresilient campaign was to use coffee cups to deliver important mental health and resilience messages to the Ararat community during the Covid 19 pandemic. The hashtag developed in our Young Leaders Workshop was used to drive conversation online about what ‘being resilient’ actually means. Students decided to focus on GEM (gratitude, empathy and mindfulness) for the cup designs and explore what a resilient community looks like as a theme for the wider campaign.