Upstrive

As I reflect on my first half term at GEMS Founders School - Dubai, I’m proud to have joined a community that truly puts wellbeing first. With nearly 7,000 students and staff, that’s no small task, but our GESS Educational Award nomination for Best Wellbeing Initiatives for both staff and students is proof of the incredible efforts everyone has made to create a caring and supportive environment. One of the standout moments this term has been seeing the continued success of Upstrive, our wellbeing platform. In this time, we’ve had over 55,000 student check-ins, giving us valuable insights into how our students are feeling and enabling us to proactively support their needs. This kind of engagement really highlights how much Upstrive is making a difference. We also launched our first GFS Staff Wellbeing Newsletter, focused entirely on supporting the mental and physical health of our whole staff. On top of that, we celebrated important events like Breast Cancer Awareness Pink Day, World Mental Health Green Day, and the GEMS Family First Enrichment Day. And for a bit of fun, we organised the first-ever MB Schools Cluster Golf Day, where we came third, and won the Dubai School Games TopGolf Competition. It’s been a rewarding start, and I’m so grateful for the support of Kathryn King, Hanaa Elsayed, the welfare team, and the entire GFS staff. I’m excited to keep building on our wellbeing work and seeing how we can make an even bigger impact in the GFS community. #GFS #GEMSFoundersSchool #GFSWellbeing #WellbeingFirst

🌟 ¡Upstrive llega a México! 🇲🇽✨ Estoy emocionada de compartir que Upstrive, la plataforma que promueve el #bienestaremocional de los estudiantes, ha llegado oficialmente a México, y no podría estar más orgullosa de anunciar que el Colegio Alemán es el pionero en implementar esta increíble herramienta en su comunidad educativa. Agradezco profundamente al colegio por su confianza y visión de futuro para poner en primer plano la salud emocional de sus estudiantes. Este es solo el comienzo de un gran viaje para transformar el bienestar en las aulas, y me siento muy afortunada de comenzar este proyecto desde UBUNTU Habilidades Humanas, acompañada de personas maravillosas. Un agradecimiento especial a los creadores de Upstrive ✨ Linda Bonnar PCC Coach, PPGDip y Sven Maikranz y a su gran equipo Peaches Llanto Audrey R. Hametner, MBA, ACC, SSBB y Petar Obradovic por su compromiso y trabajo incansable. Y de igual manera, gracias a los directivos del Colegio Alemán, Daniel Ivan Aguilar Diaz Flores, por ser parte fundamental de este gran paso. ¡Sigamos impulsando el bienestar emocional de nuestros jóvenes! 💙📚✨ #inteligenciaemocional #educaciónemocional

Young people's mental health and wellbeing have never been more important, and as educators, we know just how crucial it is to provide the right tools to support them. 🧠💙 That’s why Upstrive Education is your school’s ultimate wellbeing toolkit! 📦 With data-driven insights, social-emotional learning programs, and real-time support for students and teachers, Upstrive makes it easy to empower every student in your care. 📊 Whether you're supporting emotional growth, building resilience, or just ensuring every student feels seen & heard, Upstrive helps you tackle it all. 🌱 No matter where your school is in its wellbeing journey, the best time to talk about supporting your staff and students is always now. ⏳ Feel free to message me here or email me at linda.b@upstrivesystem.com to find out how Upstrive can support your school community today! 📩 #Upstrive #wellbeing #youngminds #mentalhealth #wellbeing #mentalwellbeing #schools #education #educationforall #SEL #Mindmanagement #mindmatters #upstriveeducation #backtoschool #alwayslearning #selfawareness #stressmanagement #stress

It can be quite tricky to measure wellbeing, particularly improvements made in wellbeing in a school. At GFS, we measure it in different ways: student voice, PASS year-on-year, verbal feedback, achievement & engagement in lessons. One way we measure wellbeing is through Upstrive - Deeper Insights, Stronger Results. Children from Y1-Y13 have an option to check in with us on the app daily and let us know how they are feeling. Through robust safeguarding and wellbeing systems, we are able to support students immediately. But we are also able to use those check-ins as a way to track trends. This crucial part of the wellbeing data wheel provides really meaningful data for whole school wellbeing. This data is the full academic year of 2022-23 compared against the academic year of 2023-24 so far... and it shows our children's sense of wellbeing is improving. Over 100k pieces of evidence to support the efforts the team at GFS make every day. Let's keep going! GEMS Founders School - Dubai Matthew Burfield Matthew Savage Audrey R. Hametner, MBA, ACC, SSBB Sven Maikranz Ian Plant Ella Sussex Robyn Luckman Jack Perrett Rachael Boyle Leanne Oung Emma White luke oung

And the winner is .... Upstrive !!!! 🕺 💃 🥇 What an amazing week it has been and the absolute highlight was winning the Startup Competition with 60 participants at Skinnovation.io with our new Upstrive Product for parents and kids!! What makes me the happiest is that the topic of mental health of teenagers is really getting attention now. The problem is getting clear to everyone and now it's all about taking action and that's what we are about at Upstrive :) Ever since I started our journey with Upstrive, I feel like I have more energy than ever. But coming out of events like this motivates me even more on our journey - see you next year, Skinnovation.io! 🔥 A huge shoutout to the team at Skinnovation.io under the leadership of Kathrin Treutinger and her amazing support from Kathrin Schrebe, Simon Varges, Valentin Spörk, Lara Brenner, Ferdinand Wollin, Robert Schimpf und Marie Sonntag - what you guys have created is truly unique and I can't wait to see it grow further! (thank you Kathrin Schrebe for being so patient with all my questions 🙈 ) 🚀 So many amazing startups and unbelievable energy to build great products and make a difference in the world! Congratulations also to the other finalists Fabian Rauch with CRQLAR, Hermann Moser with arterioscope, Zdeněk Zeiner with skifi, Samuel Krupensky with Kruner Industries, you guys all rock! 💪 An award like this would never be possible without the team behind it and the support from the people who believe in us and what we do. Most of all everyone who is involved in making Upstrive what it is today. Thank you all for your dedication to making a difference for the suffering kids out there. Linda Bonnar PCC Coach, PPGDip, Petar Obradovic, Stojan Ivanisevic, PhD, Peaches Llanto, Audrey R. Hametner, MBA, ACC, SSBB, Momo Maximilian, Daniel Holzmann, Judith Erlfelder, Mark Samways 🏔 Amazing keynote from Benedikt Böhm (CEO of Dynafit and world record speed climber) on so many interesting angles of business and extreme sports. fear in vs fear of, deductive thinking, situational leadership, what is essential - what makes us faster, are concepts that really stuck 💪 And I can't thank our business angels enough, without them none of this would be possible. I love the term business angels because that is what they are. They support us in so many ways and without them we would not be where we are today. Thank you Conny Hörl, Katja Ruhnke with CK Venture Capital GmbH, Susanne Hillebrand, Julia Hillebrand and Elli Wiesbauer- Hillebrand for your amazing support. Also thank you to Svenja Lassen and Birgit Ströbel and Dusan Todorovic, Lukas Punzet and Manuel Rainer (and many more) for helping us get the word out on Upstrive! We just launched our new website www.upstrive.de for the prelaunch and new Instagram for the parent version (upstrive. app) , please spread the word, we will have lots of valuable content on the topic :) #mentalhealth #makeadifference

Sometimes you need to stop the high speed train and look out of the window to see the important things. They are only visible when you stop and take the time to notice. When we created this video we were very focused on the actual video creation, editing etc. Now where it's done I realize how much it actually means. We are changing lives on a daily basis and that feeling is more rewarding than anything I have ever experienced professionally. I probably work more than ever, don't pay myself a salary, am more motivated and have more energy than ever. I can only confirm what people say about purpose and meaning. We make kids mentally strong so they are ready for a future nobody can predict. I can't think of anything that could give me more purpose. The tribe of people looking for meaningful impact is growing daily. This is amazing and soon it will have enough momentum to really drive change. Join the tribe, it's rewarding ;)

I feel so happy and proud, these several years running the IT at upstrivesystem.com have been amazing! Knowing that we help improve the well-being of those who are the most vulnerable is a great satisfaction!

Often when we are working in a small company we keep our heads down, try to stay the course and just keep moving. Yet amongst the chaos of moving forward, something extraordinary happened in September that I just realized I didn't take the time to acknowledge and share. Since the spring of 2020 I have embarked on a remarkable journey to strategize, build and support a wellbeing #Edtech platform called Upstrive - Deeper Insights, Stronger Results. We launched in October 2020, and within our first year won a prestigious award at the #GESS Education conference for being an innovative solution for schools and universities. Currently, I serve as COO and an #investor of this magnificent young start-up. I wanted to share that in September this year, our young start-up was officially asked (and accepted) to be a part of the #OECD Education 2023 focus group. What an amazing thing to happen! This focus group within the OECD - OCDE was launched to help countries reflect on and explore the long-term challenges facing education, and Upsrive will be a part of influencing education policy regarding wellbeing that has truly global implications. 😲As I reflect on what this says about what we have built, I recognize it is ONLY with teamwork and focus that we have gotten to where we are today. Congratulations team, as a remote team, we never really took the time together to #recognize the impact of what this means and I hope everyone who knows any of the team members, take a moment to help them realize that the work they are doing matters. It has #impact and it is seen, by the right people. Bravo to each and every one of us! 👏 Linda, Petar Obradovic, Stojan Peaches Erika Llanto, Sven Maikranz