The Benji Project has awarded $5,000 scholarships to two Port Townsend teachers for training they need to lead classes on stress management and resilience for teens.

The scholarships were awarded to Teresa Shiraishi, a professional therapist at Dove House Advocacy Services, and Heather McRae-Woof, a mindfulness and meditation teacher and previous public school administrator. 

“Both Teresa and Heather are really excellent candidates,” said Cynthia Osterman, founder and board chair of the Benji Project. “They both have a really great presence and the ability to connect with young people.”

The Benji Project is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2016 in response to the suicide of a local teenager, Benji Kenworthy. Its mission is to offer teens tools to navigate the emotional challenges of adolescence, specifically using evidenced-based concepts of mindfulness and self-compassion. Kenworthy was Osterman’s son. 

“One of the barriers of the program so far was that the curriculum we offer needs to have someone trained to teach it,” Osterman said. “We haven’t had anyone locally who was able to do that.”

With help from the Fund for Women and Girls, which funded one of the scholarships through a grant, the Benji Project is training Shiraishi and McRae-Woof so the Benji Project will no longer need to hire teachers from outside Jefferson County.

“This generation isn’t the first to deal with stress,” said McRae-Woof, who previously worked as an administrator in New York City and Detroit K-12 public schools. “But there is something about our world today, especially with new technology and social media, that makes it even more important to teach coping strategies and self-care strategies.”

McRae-Woof has experience teaching movement, meditation and writing as tools for self-discovery and community connection. She believes teaching mindfulness and self-compassion strategies are important for teens to be able to grow emotionally. 

The Benji Project chose the award-winners based on their experience in working with young people, their experience with mindfulness, and their relatability and ability to connect with a young audience.

“I am excited to work with Benji Project because I really enjoy working with youth,” Shiraishi said. “I enjoy engaging with them, learning from them, building skills with them.”

As a professional therapist at Dove House Advocacy Services, Shiraishi works to support the healing journey of survivors of sexual violence. She also uses mindfulness practice in her professional work and, for the past four years, she has been facilitating healthy relationship skills courses to the ninth-grade students at Port Townsend, Chimacum and Quilcene schools. 

“One way to think about the mindfulness curriculum is learning how to treat yourself with the kind of compassion that you treat your close friends,” Shiraishi said. “Often we are more critical of ourselves than anyone else is, and we are much better at taking care of others than taking care of ourselves. We still have the skills to be kind and caring, but we need to learn to reflect them back.”

The curriculum the award-winners will teach is a series of guided meditations and various activities that help build skills of self-compassion.

Previously, the Benji Project has held classes for high school students and a camp for middle school girls. Their eight-week program, called “Making Friends with Yourself,” is aimed for ages 11 to 19 and their parents. The program shares specific tools to build greater resilience and works to decrease depression, anxiety, perceived stress and negative mood in teens. 

To learn more about the Benji Project, go to thebenjiproject.org.