The Badges of Power - NFTs!
Creators of collectible Badges of Power characters. Through our 6-book series, we are pioneering NFTs that promote positive mental health in children and the good that flows from
children’s well-being, happiness, and confidence.
Who Are We?
Using our story’s relatable characters who grow from emotional challenges, our first book,
Mission: CONTROL! A Big Feelings Adventure!, and the complementary Mission: ACCOMPLISHED! NFT Collection (a trilogy) kickstart important conversations about mental health in children, a topic of increasing concern in light of the pandemic.
The multi-award winning book is the first in a six-book series about the adventures of Joseph and his sidekick, Gretchen. Along with Joseph, the reader experiences the journey from Big Feelings to Mission Accomplished! With his mom’s calm and patient presence and understanding of his needs, he receives healthy messages about feeling seen, heard and felt. These messages are reflected in the NFT Collection,
The Joseph Collection: Mission: ACCOMPLISHED! and The Joseph Collection: Emotional Regulation.
Creative Team
Author: Nan Arkwright
Nan is a pediatric occupational therapist supporting mental health for kids. Based on her experiences working with children, she published her first book at age 69 and created her first NFT at age 70. Her purpose is to have a global impact on families by educating them in fun and memorable ways about mental health and doing good in the world.
Illustrator: Joe Bauman
Joe is an illustrator and multimedia artist. Joe utilizes his wide variety of skills and experiences to expand the world of The Badges of Power. Joe makes these books as educational and entertaining as possible, and most importantly, brings hope to the world through his engaging drawings. Joe is influenced not only by his love for movies, animation, and comics, but also by the amazing people he worked with during his time at Dreamworks Animation. His art can make someone forget about what’s happening in the world, and transport them someplace else, and have it be fun and exciting.
Advisory Team
Debra Nipp - Founder of Womxn + Crypto
Debra is a web3 entrepreneur and co-founder of the Womxn + Crypto and Catalog3 (launching soon). She is co-creator of "Legs and ledgers", with a focus on safety and education in web3. She is partnered with Verse Immersive, an NFT gallery, as a curator to support women and underrepresented artists. Debra is a community curator for the Hugz community and a founding collaborative member of the Lost Girls of the Metaverse NFT community. She is passionate about the NFT community and has been investing in crypto and NFTs since 2020. Debra is also a pediatric occupational therapist and the owner and director of a multi-disciplinary therapy clinic working with the neurodivergent population. Her personal journey in web3 has driven her to speak up on safety and fraud, especially for women and underrepresented populations.
Trent Thompson - Artrepreneur
Born and raised in Rochester New York, childhood trips to contemporary museums and city streets exposed “E Trent” to the diverse creative potential of reinventing space through artwork. Always fascinated with artistic masters capturing movement and the clean bright chaos of street art, by his teens he began to combine these two passions together. Further inspired by his intersections with the content design world, he has become known for pieces that incorporate explosions of incandescent color filtered through a perspective of a more traditionally trained artist. Trent has sought to set himself apart not only through his portfolio but by the way his projects incorporate themselves into a community.
E. Trent is the founder and creative director of OnlyUP Llc, a multi-platform art agency, specializing in design, installations and visual production. Only Up also functions as a Gallery space exhibiting and promoting artists. Trent is also working on his NFT project "Scrappy Pups".
Caroline Kermel - Producer at Warner Bros. Animation
As Producer, Caroline oversees the complex production schedule and budget for Batwheels, an upcoming animated preschool series at Warner Bros Animation. Prior to this, Caroline was the Producer of the final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Disney+, as well as Associate Producer for the critically acclaimed and Emmy nominated Disney XD series, Star Wars Rebels.
Caroline started her career at DreamWorks Animation as an Executive Assistant and she worked her way up through the ranks to eventually become Production Supervisor. Over the course of seven years at DreamWorks, she worked on a variety of film and television projects including Puss in Boots, Madagascar 3, and How to Train Your Dragon 2, alongside her long time friend and colleague, Joe Bauman.
Marty Sixkiller - Vice President of Delivery at Code Up
Bio coming soon...
What’s Our Mission?
Goodness for Good: Our purpose is to use our gifts to help others through the power of story and NFTs:
We affirm others’ feelings.
We care for others by listening, seeing, and feeling.
We create a safe space for others’ feelings.
We connect with others to give them freedom to be who they want to be.
We support others so they can grow in new ways.
We affirm others’ dreams and happiness.
We equip others to stretch and hope for the promise of tomorrow.
We completely accept others so they feel valued.
We believe in and encourage others’ efforts to thrive.
We love others just as they are.
Why Does Talking About Mental Health Matter?
Conversations around mental health have been highly stigmatized for generations. For too long, the idea of caring for one’s mental health through therapeutic services, medicinal support when necessary, and accountability through community held a negative perception of a person’s “assigned” worth or credibility. Therefore, hurting people hid their need for help. Children witnessed this and learned to hide too.
Finally, influencers, leaders, and proponents of intentional mental health care and support are being heard. The vulnerability of notable figures to acknowledge their need for mental health support has begun to normalize self-care and asking for help for everyone.
We are part of that conversation.
As advocates of mental health, we continually promote resources, tools, and strategies to bring health and healing to homes around the world. We equip parents, educators, and counselors to understand the development of children in order to support positive mental health whatever their role with children may be. We also work directly with children, through Nan’s role as a pediatric OT and Joe’s role as a former teacher, through our book, Mission: CONTROL! A Big Feelings Adventure!, and now through our NFT collection - to equip, educate, and champion the efforts of children on their paths to positive mental health.
We aren’t alone in this desire to bring awareness and support to everyone we can impact. Below are a few allies in this effort.
The conversation surrounding mental health really hits home for me. Many people don't understand how debilitating mental illness truly can be, and even more than that, how common it is, yet people are afraid to have the serious discussions about it. I welcomed the opportunity to be a part of Angst to further the dialogue around mental health and to help people understand the impact anxiety has on our mental state and encourage people, especially kids, to ask for help.
- MICHAEL PHELPS, Olympic Gold Medalist
According to Mightier.com, having tools to regulate emotions helps kids handle stressors, think flexibly, manage their impulses, and solve problems; it also helps protect against anxiety and depressive symptoms.
In an effort to raise awareness about positive mental health, so vital to children’s development,
Family Involvement Center in Arizona offers some sobering facts from the World Health Organization:
As many as one in six U.S. children ages 6-17 has a treatable mental health disorder such as depression, anxiety problems or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Half of all mental health conditions start by 14 years of age but most cases are undetected and untreated.
The consequences of not addressing adolescent mental health conditions extend to adulthood, impairing both physical and mental health and limiting opportunities to lead fulfilling lives as adults.
How Do We Get More of This in Everyday Life?
As a pediatric occupational therapist, Nan’s clients are experiencing unprecedented levels of stress and anxiety and poor ability to regulate their emotions in response to triggers or overwhelm. To help them calm their nervous systems, she slows down the level of activity, reduces the environmental stimuli, shares her calm voice and body, uses carefully selected words, and invites them to join her in the adventures of Joseph and Gretchen. In the book, Joseph learns about emotional regulation and the promise of tomorrow, when hard things will be just a little easier, thanks to practicing today and being one day older.
After reading the book to them, she reinforces the research-based messages embedded in the story with fun activities and with her hands-on toolkit stocked with toys they can use to move from the emotional brain to the thinking brain. Using memorable and concrete reinforcers, she is demystifying, accepting, and normalizing a range of emotions, thus promoting better mental health in her clients. The goal is for children to have the ability to see themselves being successful in the future, believe in themselves, and use positive self-talk about who they are and what they can do. Children who self-regulate and believe in themselves become adults who build healthy relationships, live with emotional intelligence, and are productive, contributing citizens of our world. When children win, we all win.
When many little people in many little places do many little things, then the whole world changes.
- M. Franti
How Can You Help?
Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day (May 7) aims to raise awareness about the importance of children’s mental health and to show that children’s emotional well-being is essential to their healthy development.
We invite you to join us in promoting better mental health for children through purchasing our first phase of NFTs, which will fund the next books in the series as well as causes such as National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). There has never been a more urgent need than now for your support.
Roadmap - Where Are We Going?
We are completing our Mission: ACCOMPLISHED! Collection (a trilogy) and The Joseph Collection: Emotional Regulation and starting our second book in the series, Mission: BRAINSTORM! A Big Brain Adventure! that will complement the next NFT collection, The Joseph Collection: Connection.
As founders on the older side in this space, we also want to inspire people of all ages to get involved in web3 and the arts as a way to make a difference in the world.
We want to be part of the vibrant and creative community in web3, making a contribution to the world, reaching a niche that appears to be untouched, helping to define what the future looks like, reaching the neurodiverse population, and building acceptance and inclusivity.
Researching projects in the NFT world, it appears that Joe’s cinematic artwork, our audience who have a heart for children, our positive mental health messaging, our Goodness for Good mission, and our educator backgrounds are unique. This is what we’re doing to capitalize on our own Goodness for Good:
Spring 2022
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Release our first 3 NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain: Mission: ACCOMPLISHED! based on our children’s book, Mission: CONTROL! A Big Feelings Adventure! Joseph shares his Big Feelings, Big Imagination, and Big Mission: Accomplished!
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Giveaway: Anyone who purchases one of the NFTs will receive a signed copy of the book as well as the Big Feelings Toolkit that accompanies the book.. If the trilogy is purchased as a bundle, the purchaser will receive the toolkit and book as well as unlock the experience of the author and illustrator reading the book IRL, complete with sound effects.
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Promote mental health messages relating to the inaugural NFTs.
Summer 2022
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Release our NFT collection, The Joseph Collection: Emotional Regulation. This collection will show the emotional range Joseph has—from upset to playful. Great tools for learning about emotional regulation.
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Giveaway: Purchasers will be involved in naming one of the KelvinKnights, who will be important players in the next book.
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Donate to National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) based on sales history.
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Promote mental health messages relating to the first book.
Fall 2022
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Release our second book: Mission: BRAINSTORM! A BIG Brain Adventure! What all could go wrong on Joseph's rocket ship, DreamDart 11, on its way to the first of three Kingdoms? And how will Joseph and his crew grow their brains in the next adventure?
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Giveaway (IRL): Purchasers will be invited to a reading of the book by the author and illustrator before it becomes public. The illustrator will demonstrate how to draw Joseph, step by step.
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Donate to National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) based on sales history.
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Promote mental health messages relating to our NFT collection, The Joseph Collection: Emotional Regulation.
Winter 2022
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Release our second collection of NFTs: The Joseph Collection: Connection
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See how Joseph learns about the importance of connection with his mom. Great messages about belonging and surviving.
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Giveaway (IRL): Purchasers will be invited to a training for how to use the book to help children with their Big Feelings. Free activities for grown-ups and children to do together.
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Donate to National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) based on sales history.
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Promote mental health messages relating to the second book.
What To Look Forward To in 2023 And Beyond!
More books, collections, mental health messages, rare NFTs to collect for each of the remaining messages, swag, bonuses, journal, and more—including debuts by Gretchen, Robojo, and The Green HypnoZoids and, if we can talk her into it, Joseph’s mom too. Also watch for a campaign around Goodness for Good (G4G) and an opportunity to commission an NFT.
We're dreaming BIG that our characters and stories have a future that is out-of-this-world!
We often hear that children are so resilient. We see them navigate hard things and say, “See? They’re so adaptable; they’ll be fine.” Then we return to trying to keep our own heads above water in the perils of life. The reality is that resilience is born of life experience, and kids have very little. Our mis-labeling survival skills as resilience has led to a world full of adults who’ve never learned how to experience healthy relationships, develop empathy, or navigate big emotions. In a sense, we are culturally “sicker” than ever.
We get to put an end to that epidemic. Together with other allies, we are putting everything into promoting wellness, happiness, confidence, and positive mental health messages. When we start with children, we change the future.
Using the power of story, as with our 6-book series for children, technology, as with our use of various social platforms, apps, and tools, art, as with Joe’s book illustrations, NFTs, and promotional images, and mental health, as with our therapeutically-minded stories, art, and technology, we are changing the world. It’s a big statement, isn’t it? But when we invest in the emotional, mental, psychological, physical, and spiritual development of children today, we reap the rewards for all into tomorrow.
Are you ready to join us?
“What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?”
- George Eliot, novelist
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity
- Leo Tolstoy
Making money is a happiness; making other people happy is a superhappiness
- Nobel Peace Prize receipient Muhammad Yunus
