A-OKNZ
a new approach to suicide prevention
Acts of Kindness that build life-supporting communities.
A-OK is an acronym for Acts of Kindness that build life-supporting communities. For a long time, suicide prevention has been treaded with a lot of caution, fear, and doubt about what to say, how to say what, what is the right thing to say, and then the question of am I the right person to say anything....the never-ending question and lack of information disqualify anyone from offering anything. Its an ongoing saga, however, what we have learnt is that most people do want to help, and those in need of help or are struggling, almost all desire someone to ‘just be there’, while they sort out what they need.
These are not skills that are newly learnt, these are intuitive acts that we already have that just need a right of way.
A-OK NZ was formed officially in 2017 as a way to keep these workshops running. Prior to that, the facilitators of A-OK NZ had been delivering these workshops throughout the country since 2004 under Lifeline. Our learnings have evolved over the years of delivering training across the country. We get to hear community stories, learn new approaches to suicide prevention, adopt a new perspective that challenges our own social conditioning, evolving a clearer picture of our basic human needs, especially in times of struggle, hardship, unexpected turns in life, most people just want someone to ‘be there’ to hear them, to help them unravel the ‘blur’ and walk with them towards identifying supports to keep them safe.
These are all Acts of Kindness, in our truest human form, we naturally just want to help people, we don’t like to hear of some of the devastations or adversities that people go through, in fact we all just want to help and if we can, some of us try to fix the problem before the problem is defined.......and that my friend is you just being there, being kind, being available to help someone in their time of need.
We believe that anyone can help prevent suicide
We believe that anyone can have life-supporting conversations
We believe that community-led solutions for suicide prevention will naturally come out of
life-supporting conversations and this indeed will build life-supporting communities.
A-OK NZ provides training opportunities for people to realise the potential they already have to help, to irradiate some of the misconceived thinking we have about starting that conversation, having a proven framework that is person-centred, that co-creates a safety plan towards living life to the fullest again.....
Their journey like ours, needs to start somewhere, along the way we all need aroha, care, courageous people, support and most of all kindness.......
See you at our next workshop...coming to your city soon.