Worried about students’ mental health?
The most powerful thing you can do to prevent depression and suicide is to help students build positive relationships.
And we can help! ProjectConnect’s mission is to help people build connection and community.
Because when you connect, you protect.
It’s not a coincidence that we’re experiencing a loneliness epidemic AND a mental health epidemic. Research shows that having good relationships is more important than any other factor in preventing depression and suicide. Positive relationships are also the number one predictor of happiness and life satisfaction.
Campuses around the country are struggling to respond to students’ rising mental health needs. If you feel any of the following, you’re not alone!
Disheartened, overwhelmed, or anxious about students’ ever-increasing mental health needs (despite providing more services to more students than ever before).
Like your efforts are “a drop in the bucket” no matter how hard you work.
Worried about students slipping through the cracks.
The current model—of providing treatment and support after students are struggling—is unsustainable. There is a different way. It IS possible to improve student mental health and well-being by taking a proactive, preventative approach.
If you want to change students’ lives, help them connect.
We use evidence-based, high-impact strategies to build connection. If you want to go the DIY route, great! Check out our free resources.
Want to minimize your time and maximize your impact? Try our proven programs. We offer 3 tiers of building connection.
Explore Connection: Talks and workshops. This is great if you want to get a quick introduction to why connection matters and some actionable strategies to build it.
Experience Connection: Multi-session programs. This is great if you want to build lasting relationships, but don’t have the capacity to develop and facilitate a program yourself. We’ll facilitate a multi-session group or training to help participants build meaningful relationships.
Expand Connection: ProjectConnect Facilitator Certification. Train students, staff, and/or faculty on your campus to run ProjectConnect groups—and build connection—year after year.
We have worked with over 75 campuses to build stronger connection and community. Check out our testimonials.
1. Explore Connection
Talks and Workshops
Did you know that over half of college students report feeling lonely at any given time? And the idea that they should be surrounded by friends, having “the best four years of their lives” only increases their sense of isolation.
Students crave deeper, more meaningful friendships, but aren’t sure how to go about creating them. If you’d like a quick introduction to why we need to tackle the loneliness crisis, and how to build real connection, invite ProjectConnect Founder, Jessica Gifford, to give an engaging, funny, and practically useful talk or workshop. Participants will leave feeling less alone, and with a simple, science-backed “formula” for making close friends quickly.
The Secret to Making Friends in College
The Friendship Formula: how to have deeper, more meaningful relationships
Friends with benefits (but not the kind you’re thinking)!
“Fun, inspiring, connecting, and useful!”
2. Experience Connection
Programs that build lasting relationships
Talks and workshops are great for a quick introduction to connection … but they rarely create lasting change. To do that, you need to create opportunities for students to build relationships over time. That’s why we offer longer, multi-session programs that help students get to know each other and establish friendships. This is a good option for you if you’re serious about building connection, but don’t have the capacity to train people on campus to become ProjectConnect facilitators, or oversee implementation of the program. We can offer a connection program for you! For example:
5 Friends in 5 Hours: This program helps incoming students develop friendships before they even arrive on campus, easing the transition (and their social anxiety). This is a 5-session program held live over Zoom for up to 100 students, delivered over the course of 5 consecutive weeks.
Social intelligence skills for college. This 5-session course is equal parts education and connection. Students learn—and practice— vital skills that are vital to making and sustaining meaningful relationships, but that are rarely explicitly taught.
ProjectConnect team-builder. This 5-session program helps groups, teams, or clubs connect quickly.
3. Expand Connection:
Become a certified ProjectConnect facilitator.
The ProjectConnect program provides a proven roadmap for building relationships quickly. It provides a fun. easy way for participants to meet and make friends.
ProjectConnect is an evidence-based program that takes small groups of 5-7 students through a series of questions and fun activities that build closeness, connection, and community. ProjectConnect groups meet for a series of six 1-hour sessions. In this short period of time, participants reduce loneliness, establish meaningful friendships, and most importantly, rave about the experience! You can read testimonials here.
98%
of participants would recommend ProjectConnect to a friend
95%
would like to participate again themselves
3 Steps to becoming certified and building connection.
Follow these 3 steps to bring the ProjectConnect program to your campus.
1
Identify Facilitators!
Identify a group of students, staff, and/or faculty members to facilitate ProjectConnect groups. Designate at least one point person to oversee the program.
2
Get Certified!
Attend one of our virtual Facilitator Certification Trainings offered every January and August. Or host a training specifically for your campus. Once certified, facilitators can lead groups year after year.
3
Connect
Students!
Schedule groups, enroll students, and launch! Students get to know each other and develop friendships over the course of 6 sessions. Repeat step 3 indefinitely.
Options for becoming certified
Attend a Facilitator Certification Training
Send individual students, staff, and faculty to a virtual certification course with participants from campuses around the country.
Check dates of the next training and/or register HERE.
Host a Facilitator Certification Training
Host a training for 4-20 students, staff, and faculty to become certified ProjectConnect facilitators. This 5-hour training is scheduled at your convenience, can be offered virtually or in-person, and will help build your team.
Benefits of certification
- Prepares you to facilitate ProjectConnect groups with students and/or employees.
- Certification lasts a lifetime and can be used anywhere connection is needed (on campus, at a local school, senior center, church, workplace, etc.). No re-certification needed.
- Facilitators have lifetime access to the ProjectConnect Facilitators' Resource HUB, which includes:
- Instructions to successfully launch groups
- The Facilitator’s Guide with step-by-step session outlines
- A sample Peer Facilitator position description and application form
- Poster and email templates for advertising ProjectConnect and recruiting participants
- Sample program evaluation forms and assessment scales
- Physical Materials (Connection Cards with the conversation prompts used in groups, and Appreciation Stationery, used in the mini connection project in session 4).
- Hosting a training includes 10 decks of Connection Cards and 10 boxes of Appreciation Stationery.
- Attending a training includes 3 decks of Connection Cards and 3 boxes of Appreciation Stationery.
- Membership in the private ProjectConnect listserv to post questions and share information with other facilitators.
- Invitation to participate in ProjectConnect Zooms with the Founder to ask questions, exchange information, and discuss topics related to successful implementation
- Discounted rate for all future trainings. You may use the group rate to attend a training or take 25% off to host a training.
- Licensing to use the ProjectConnect name and logo.
The ProjectConnect program can be used to:
Form new connections
ProjectConnect can be used pre-matriculation, during orientation, or as part of the first year experience to help entering students form important peer relationships and accelerate their adjustment to campus. It can also be offered as an open-enrollment opportunity for students who want to broaden their social circles.
Build bridges
ProjectConnect can be used to help develop positive relationships between groups, such as class years, identity groups, or between staff and faculty. This can reduce cliques and silos on campus, and help establish greater empathy, communication, and interrelationships.
Strengthen existing connections
ProjectConnect can be used to strengthen connection within groups, such as residential areas, affinity groups, majors, teams, etc. Students are often looking for opportunities to build stronger ties within their communities or with students who share similar interests.
TESTIMONIALS
Administrators
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Facilitators
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Participants
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“We implemented ProjectConnect in the spring of 2021, when our campus was operating virtually. Students really appreciated this opportunity to meet new people - whether it was new students looking to make friends, or returning students looking to expand their existing friend circles. ProjectConnect is the total package - it's simple and effective, easy to implement and scale, and accessible at a great price point.”
—Leah Berkenwald
Director of Health Promotion and Wellness Initiatives Brandeis University