The Children’s Project:
Developing an Emotional-Health-Friendly City

What is an Emotional-Health-Friendly City?

It is a city whose citizens have developed an understanding of how important emotional health is to success in life and how the neglect of emotional health in our homes and schools has jeopardized the future of our children, families and communities.

It is a city whose citizens have adopted five critical emotional needs that all people have—to feel respected, important, accepted, included and secure. It is adopted as a unifying concept around which all elements of the city can rally to create emotionally healthy environments where children and adults can work and play with joy and peace of mind.

It is a city that provides its inhabitants with an important, basic resource, a small book with a big idea, How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children, by Gerald Newmark, Ph.D. It is the book in which the concepts of the five critical emotional needs first saw the light of day.

It is a city which, in collaboration with The Children’s Project, makes the book available to all individuals at a cost that everyone can afford. It also promotes opportunities for citizens to meet in small groups, for weeks at a time, to apply the concepts to all aspects of their lives.

It is a city where all the elements—business, education, civic and community agencies—can come together in a collaborative, unified attempt to achieve peace and prosperity. In this way, organizations are created where individuals relate to each other in emotionally healthy ways. Since emotional health provides a foundation for success in most aspects of life, all individuals and the community as a whole benefit.