#73 - Margo Ward: Educating Children for the Future

Mental Health education in children is critical to making long term change in society and today's guest is dedicating herself to this cause.Margo Ward is the founder and CEO of KidsXpress Life. Her vision and inspiration for this world-first program was bestowed on her by the children she worked with as Head of Play Therapy at the Sydney Children’s Hospital. While working predominantly with chronically ill children within Oncology and ICU, Margo saw the opportunity to broaden the scope of creative approaches to therapy with children, and she began to develop a new model for looking at trauma and grief counselling.In 2005, Margo shared her vision for a unique expressive therapy program with potential investors from the private sector. Margo realised that by uniquely combining music, art, drama and play therapies in a group therapy context, the program would have incredible potential to transform young lives. Investors from across the private & corporate sectors believed in the potential of the program, and so KidsXpress was born. In a short time, Margo established a highly credentialed board (including renowned economist Dr John Hewson as Chair), a talented and passionate team of therapists and sponsors, referral pathways and a robust set of program effectiveness metrics to get the attention of government and other youth support services.In 2011 Margo was awarded a scholarship to attend the Executive Leadership Program at Stanford University, an experience that has not only underpinned the next stages of expansion of her social impact interests but also opened up opportunities to address societal issues on a broader scale.Margo’s vision continues to shine through the work of KidsXpress; transforming the lives of hundreds of children, their families and communities through leading expressive therapies.You learn more about Kids Xpress: kidsxpress.org.au...Thanks for listening! We would love your support so we can keep growing this show! Please sign up to nickbracks.com to receive a free chapter of my book. We would love you to subscribe, review, share and comment on the podcast to help us make a difference!The Move Your Mind book & Audiobook is now Available in stories Australia wide and online globally! You can find free chapters & order here: Move Your Mind Book or on my site: nickbracks.comYou can also sign up to our new Move Your Mind community group here: moveyourmind.me or here: Move Your Mind Community You can find all of the other links here: https://linktr.ee/moveyourmind Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.