U!Shine Goes Online
As the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, the majority of the population has focused on the physical and economic effects. However, as more is learned, it's become evident that the virus has affected the mental and emotional state of millions across the globe.
Jennifer Winton has been intensely concerned about those two areas. Winton, an Oklahoma native, is the owner and CEO of UShine, a non-profit that focuses on the mental and emotional health of everyone that needs it.
“We are a mental health resource for the mainstream,” Winton said. “We provide free mental health educational resources for everybody. We do believe everybody should make mental health a priority. We provide curriculum, small and large group material, that anybody can use who wants to get together and learn more about how various aspects of our life impact our mental health.”
Winton and her start-up team formed UShine in 2015 after years of dealing with issues of her own mental health. During that time, she wasn’t able to find the resources she needed. That led her to create a place that did.
“Like most of these things, they come out of a personal story. That’s true for me. I have struggled personally with anxiety and depression since childhood. UShine was born out of a frustration with my own experience of feeling like what was available for me to understand mental health in a holistic way was lacking. It was really difficult to dig in and find the resources for all those things. This isn’t a one size fits all journey.”
Winton said out of that frustration, she wanted to bring together the means into one package that people can study all at once. That is where UShine was born. The original plan had Winton and her team putting together specific packages for different groups that would address specific issues the members of a group were trying to deal with.
“We want people to come together and discuss,” Winton said. “We are trying to help bridge that gap between those who struggle and those who don’t.”
UShine chapters were created at Oklahoma Christian University, Oklahoma Christian Academy and Lipscomb University (TN). A team in Vienna, Austria also had formed a chapter.
Yet, Winton still didn’t feel UShine was reaching its potential.
“I started realizing this material is great for college students and high school students and for schools to kind of snatch up and use within their systems. But we kept having people see our posts and saying ‘tell me more about this curriculum. How can I get that? I want to get that with my friends.’ We started really seeing that people do want this. But as a school might be able to afford to purchase this material to use across a campus, we need to just get this out there free.”
Near the start of 2020, UShine held a fundraiser which allowed Winton to put all of the material on her website, ushine.org. It is now available for any individual or group to access and use. “That’s been my goal all along,” Winton said. “It’s just when you are running a non-profit, funds are limited and it takes time to figure that out. But that was the goal from day one, to make it free. It just became a reality this year.”
Winton offers two educational programs labeled Healthy Habits and UShine Conversations. They are broken down into sessions and allow groups of any size to utilize.