Resilience Across Borders

Resilience Across Borders is dedicated to increasing access to mental health interventions for children and adolescents. We focus on serving students from economically marginalized communities by partnering with underserved elementary schools and nonprofits providing free after-school programming in Maryland and Washington, DC. Our research-informed Resilience Builder Program-Universal™ (RBP-U) focuses on building resilience, which helps children learn to be proactive leaders, strengthen their social connections, and bounce back from difficult experiences. Childhood resilience is associated with improved behavior, peer relationships, family functioning, and academic achievement—leading to a healthy transition to adulthood.

The RBP-U teaches children important skills (e.g., leadership and communication skills, coping strategies for handling anxiety, frustration, and anger, and how to think flexibly and be proactive problem-solvers) that research shows increase students’ resilience and academic engagement. The RBP-U also aims to improve youth’s understanding of mental health broadly and normalize conversations about mental health. Last school year, we trained 11 teachers who helped 200 students build their resilience and increase their academic engagement. This school year, we are training over 20 teachers to help their 400 students. Next school year, we aim to train 45 teachers to serve over 1,000 students.