Overview
I am a part of Mental Health for Every Adolescent (MHEA), a student run organization that promotes mental health in high schools across the US and India. I joined shortly after this organization was created in 2018 and have been a part of it ever since. Currently I am the director of strategy and operations and handle our day-to-day operations in India as well as developing curriculum for our workshops. This experience has taught me how to organize and coordinate activates with school students who are many time zones across and also work towards addressing a great need in the world.
Personal Importance
I initially joined MHEA because I felt like high school students in India often do not get the support, they need to remain mentally healthy throughout their high school experience. This problem is further exasperated by the stigma around mental health and the fact that high school is a time when most students are in their adolescence which can be a difficult time due to the rapid physical and mental changes the body experiences.
I wanted to do something about this and provide high school students the resources they need to help themselves or support a friend facing a mental health issue. |
Tasks Accomplished
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Leadership Competencies Gained
Personal Contributions-
Mental health is an area I am passionate about and one that I feel desperately needs to be addressed. I feel that there is a lack of emphasis laid on staying mentally healthy in high school and college and this tends to take a toll on students often making the educational experience much more challenging. Being a part of MHEA allowed me to become a part of the solution to the problem and make in impact on some high school students who will hopefully impact others as they move on in their educational and professional journeys.
Productive relationships-
I worked with multiple volunteers and teachers over the years, and this has helped me understand how to maintain good communication and work in a manner that is productive for both of us. Often while working with volunteers, I need to first assess their level of understanding of mental health and then train them accordingly. While working with teachers and schools we also have to be conscious of the fact that schools have some preferences and do not like certain sensitive topics to be discussed. In cases like these, we have to work together to meet in the middle and maximize our impact while respecting the choices of the school.
Social responsibility-
I feel that creating awareness about mental health is also a social responsibility. In order to create an environment wherein mental health can be freely discussed, everyone in the community has to do their bit. In trying to create such an environment, MHEA is helping people become more comfortable in discussing mental health and eradicating the stigma that currently exists around it. In our workshops we often talk about how promoting mental health is a community based process which I feel emphasizes on the social aspect of mental health and how we as a society have to come together to address mental health issues instead of one person or a few people putting in all the effort.
Facilitation-
In conducing workshops over the summer of my freshman year, I learned how to interact and communicate with a group an used these learnings in training volunteers later on. This engagement helped me learn how to facilitate a conversation about sensitive topics like mental health using a variety of techniques that could encourage people to discuss mental health without making them uncomfortable or putting them in a position wherein they have to discuss something they would prefer not to. I also learned how to train other volunteers to facilitate workshops in a similar way.
Plan-
I often work with volunteers in different time zones and so it is important to plan things in advance, especially when there are multiple volunteers involved and multiple training sessions required. My time at MHEA has helped me learn how to plan meetings and trainings accordingly at times that are comfortable for both me and my volunteers. Additionally, while developing curriculum, we as a team have often had to plan out the order of topics for specific workshops and plan accordingly so that we are able to meet the school’s requirements for time and needs while creating the best learning experience possible.
Service-
Our goal with MHEA was to serve society as a whole by targeting one of the most common and growing issues that we face in high school settings and far beyond. The stigma around mental health makes it very difficult for people who are need of help to seek help. By educating our audiences about mental health, we hope to work on removing the stigma around mental health and make people more open to the idea of seeking help. In the long run this will help reduce the number of people that suffer in silence due to self and social stigmas and help society as a whole.
Providing Feedback:
Being able to provide constrictive criticism is an important competency I have acquired over time. After training volunteers, we ask them to conduct a mock workshop for us to ensure that that they are able to facilitate workshops as we intended. During these mock workshop sessions, I work with volunteers to find ways in which they can improve their facilitation and provide feedback on parts they can do better going forward. Similarly, when setting up clubs in schools, I use my past experience to help volunteers figure out what the best course of action can be to achieve our goal of successfully setting up a MHEA club in their school.
Mental health is an area I am passionate about and one that I feel desperately needs to be addressed. I feel that there is a lack of emphasis laid on staying mentally healthy in high school and college and this tends to take a toll on students often making the educational experience much more challenging. Being a part of MHEA allowed me to become a part of the solution to the problem and make in impact on some high school students who will hopefully impact others as they move on in their educational and professional journeys.
Productive relationships-
I worked with multiple volunteers and teachers over the years, and this has helped me understand how to maintain good communication and work in a manner that is productive for both of us. Often while working with volunteers, I need to first assess their level of understanding of mental health and then train them accordingly. While working with teachers and schools we also have to be conscious of the fact that schools have some preferences and do not like certain sensitive topics to be discussed. In cases like these, we have to work together to meet in the middle and maximize our impact while respecting the choices of the school.
Social responsibility-
I feel that creating awareness about mental health is also a social responsibility. In order to create an environment wherein mental health can be freely discussed, everyone in the community has to do their bit. In trying to create such an environment, MHEA is helping people become more comfortable in discussing mental health and eradicating the stigma that currently exists around it. In our workshops we often talk about how promoting mental health is a community based process which I feel emphasizes on the social aspect of mental health and how we as a society have to come together to address mental health issues instead of one person or a few people putting in all the effort.
Facilitation-
In conducing workshops over the summer of my freshman year, I learned how to interact and communicate with a group an used these learnings in training volunteers later on. This engagement helped me learn how to facilitate a conversation about sensitive topics like mental health using a variety of techniques that could encourage people to discuss mental health without making them uncomfortable or putting them in a position wherein they have to discuss something they would prefer not to. I also learned how to train other volunteers to facilitate workshops in a similar way.
Plan-
I often work with volunteers in different time zones and so it is important to plan things in advance, especially when there are multiple volunteers involved and multiple training sessions required. My time at MHEA has helped me learn how to plan meetings and trainings accordingly at times that are comfortable for both me and my volunteers. Additionally, while developing curriculum, we as a team have often had to plan out the order of topics for specific workshops and plan accordingly so that we are able to meet the school’s requirements for time and needs while creating the best learning experience possible.
Service-
Our goal with MHEA was to serve society as a whole by targeting one of the most common and growing issues that we face in high school settings and far beyond. The stigma around mental health makes it very difficult for people who are need of help to seek help. By educating our audiences about mental health, we hope to work on removing the stigma around mental health and make people more open to the idea of seeking help. In the long run this will help reduce the number of people that suffer in silence due to self and social stigmas and help society as a whole.
Providing Feedback:
Being able to provide constrictive criticism is an important competency I have acquired over time. After training volunteers, we ask them to conduct a mock workshop for us to ensure that that they are able to facilitate workshops as we intended. During these mock workshop sessions, I work with volunteers to find ways in which they can improve their facilitation and provide feedback on parts they can do better going forward. Similarly, when setting up clubs in schools, I use my past experience to help volunteers figure out what the best course of action can be to achieve our goal of successfully setting up a MHEA club in their school.
Lessons Learned & Future
This experience has been very important for me in understanding how to coordinate workshops and develop curriculum. Promoting mental health among high school students was also a personal goal of mine that this engagement allowed me to pursue. Additionally, MHEA has helped me learn a lot more about the challenges students face in high school and devise new ways to address them. This year, MHEA became a non-profit organization so that we can broaden our impact and explore opportunities to work with other organizations.
Want to learn more about what we do? Check out our website!