Teen band camp helped turn life around

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/10/2018 (2006 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

By the age of 13, Griffin Jenkins had attempted suicide twice. For a year or so after that, he stumbled through junior high, wearing a “fake smile,” before a second relapse knocked him to his knees.

By then, the teen was in Grade 9.

In December 2011, Jenkins, now a 21-year-old University of Winnipeg business student, found himself in the hospital. He was diagnosed with a form of depression and underwent 12 weeks of intensive therapy.

Looking back, he said that low point turned out to be the first step to a new life.

The medical help put him on solid ground and offered him insight that he wasn’t just a weird kid who didn’t fit in.

The second step was a radio ad his father had heard about a summer music camp. “He said it sounded like band camp for moody kids, and that I should look into it,” Jenkins recalled.

Music camp turned out to be a ticket to freedom. He met other youth like him, tapped into his musical talents, started playing bass guitar, drums and learned the keyboard. He still plays in a band, called A Grizzly Fate.

“It wasn’t until that summer, when I got involved with this band camp, that things really started to kick up and make sense,” Jenkins said.

Let it Out Summer Band Camp was a United Way-supported program and it still is today, under the name Rock It Out, also supported by the Mood Disorders Association of Manitoba.

“I’m very open about it,” Jenkins said in an interview to support the 2018 United Way Winnipeg campaign. “I don’t think I’d be where I am today if it wasn’t for that program. There’s no way.”

Until this fall, Jenkins paid it forward, working full time as a mental health educator with Mood Disorders, a partner agency with United Way.

These days, he is moving forward again.

The freelance mental health educator is enrolled in business administration at the University of Winnipeg. He lives at home, with his mother and stepfather, and uses healthy coping mechanisms to keep depression at bay.

“Most of the time, I like to say I’m 75 to 80 per cent symptom-free, so like, I’ve had a full-time job. Now, I’m a full-time student and I have a relationship. I’m here with my family and I’m able to live a life that for a long time I didn’t think I’d be able to have,” Jenkins said.

United Way is well into its 2018 campaign, which runs from September to January. It raised $20 million last year, and its goal for 2018 is $21 million.

More than 600 workplaces run internal fundraising drives, and every penny Winnipeggers donate goes back into the community, thanks to an operating grant from the province that supports fundraising and administration costs.

Organizers and supporters who have benefited from its programs emphasize the need is great.

Every 90 seconds, someone walks through the doors of an agency supported by the United Way, adding up to more than 325,000 visits every year.

The campaign supports a comprehensive community plan with a goal to help 11,000 more Winnipeggers, including children and families, in four priority areas.

The United Way wants to assist 4,000 more young people with mental health support. The campaign also hopes to connect another 1,800 children with mentors to exit or avoid gang involvement and graduate high school.

The agency also wants to help an additional 2,800 adults with job and money management skills, and link some 2,700 more families to services at neighbourhood family resource centres.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca