Mission Statement
When we go to school the topics that are learned involve History, Math and English. Which is good but, at times we need time to take care of our mental health. This is the reason the Girls Build West Adams team decided to continue onto our 2nd year focusing on Mental Health awareness. In our campus we want to build an environment where everyone has a safety place and feels welcomed. Underclassmen are encouraged to attend do well in classes and to take some time off to take care of themselves. In the process, we brainstormed solutions as to how to balance our personal and academic lifestyle. We decided we will demonstrate the different ways to take care of each other and ourselves by building gardening , exercises, and continue to do workshops. Throughout each event, we will be able to successfully advocate mental health awareness by providing giveaways and promoting the resources necessary to be emotionally stable.
Project Need
At the beginning of the year, the team began sharing personal stories and the common factor that came up was stress. We instantly became passionate about wanting to promote our emotional well-being. Many were talking about the academic rigor that was accompanied by the lack motivation, fatigue, and minimal sleep. We decided, why not make this our project? After unanimously agreeing, we began brainstorming. We had many posters filled with ideas such as creating parent workshops that will allow parents to educate themselves on mental illness, especially being in a predominantly Hispanic and Black community where it is not really acknowledged. Handing out positive affirmation cards along with music and dancing events were our priorities. Finally, we decided to create a self-care day where students can learn techniques on how to treat themselves. According to research, " more than 90% of people who die by suicide show symptoms of a mental health condition". Self harming victims are 5 times likely to be girls and more 2/3 of anti depressants are mostly prescribed to girls. The team was driven to carry this plan out.
Process- Team Planning and Team EventsThe Girls Build team met weekly during lunch in school. We were then divided into groups consisting of the Food Committee, Guests for Workshops/Agenda/Budget, Logistics for Campus Facility use, and Recruitment Committee. Each group was responsible for ensuring the established goals were met. At the end of the week, all of the committees mixed and mingled to share new updates or if they needed assistance from each other. We also used the Remind and GroupMe applications to discuss our plans leading up to the final event.
The Love Yourself Campaign was a day before Valentines Day. The purpose of this event was to communicate the importance of loving ourselves first! It is important to be satisfied and happy with ourselves prior to our special loved ones. During lunch we handed out inspirational quotes attached with a lollipop to students. Students also had to fill out a " I love myself because.." We were then able to create a collage with all the " I love myself because.." reasons and hung them all around campus. Middle school students were touring West Adams Preparatory High School and we took this wonderful opportunity to promote the importance of health & wellness. The music and dancing atmosphere created by the team attracted students to our event. We created posters and handed out candies while simultaneously encouraging girls to join the Girls Build team of West Adams for their upcoming school year.
Our second event was a Dance-Off that took place on campus at West Adams Prep High School. Music is proven to serve as a stress-reliever especially in high school. Providing food and other refreshments was definitely much appreciated by all participating students. We truly enjoyed watching our peers enjoy the relaxing atmosphere of the music. We raffled goody bags to our top winners that spent the most time dancing and playing musical chairs.
We concluded our event with a Panther Wellness day. We primarily focused on underclassmen and therefore we recruited about 50 girls that were 9th and 10th graders to participate. The importance of wellness, along with the components to living a stress-free life was restated in this session. Nutrition, exercise routines, social relationships and spirituality were some of the many topics in this session. We also promoted the resources available such as Head-space, Buddy Project, Let's talk mental health among others. Lastly, we handed out a goody bag to each of our girls. The pens, journals, stress balls, and the T-shirt was an amazing giveaway experience.
Outcomes
The Girls Build team are very determined, young leaders that have gained the necessary worth ethic to create and finish a project. Meeting our objective of promoting mental health awareness was extremely rewarding. We were able to make a small but significant impact on the lives of others. We know our project was a success because we were able to create a very intimate and trustworthy connection in the events. Girls sharing their personal experience and how they moved past that obstacle was very heartbreaking. Learning about the day to day struggles most girls endure only fueled our passion for promoting the importance of mental health. Communicating with other organizations about our objective and receiving feedback about our events was also very beneficial to our group. We learned how to be more organized and we began building our networking connections. The ability to create a project from scratch was a success.
Reflection
Originally, our plan was to reach out to nearby middle school students and have a full immersive day consisting of different workshops teaching students how to treat themselves and providing them resources. At first, we wanted to provide these services to 8th graders because the transition from middle school to high school is just as hard as transitioning from high school to college. However, as time progressed, we decided to focus on the underclassmen from our high school. Contacting organizations was one of our greatest challenges. Weeks before our final event, our confirmed organizations were unable to participate. However, Our backup plan was the Panther Wellness center of our high school saved our project. This was a very valuable experience because we learned how difficult it is to contact organizations and most importantly, to always have a back up plan. Although we were very determined on our initial plan, we were very flexible and we were able to carry out our objective differently from what we had expected. In the end, promoting mental health awareness was a success.
When we go to school the topics that are learned involve History, Math and English. Which is good but, at times we need time to take care of our mental health. This is the reason the Girls Build West Adams team decided to continue onto our 2nd year focusing on Mental Health awareness. In our campus we want to build an environment where everyone has a safety place and feels welcomed. Underclassmen are encouraged to attend do well in classes and to take some time off to take care of themselves. In the process, we brainstormed solutions as to how to balance our personal and academic lifestyle. We decided we will demonstrate the different ways to take care of each other and ourselves by building gardening , exercises, and continue to do workshops. Throughout each event, we will be able to successfully advocate mental health awareness by providing giveaways and promoting the resources necessary to be emotionally stable.
Project Need
At the beginning of the year, the team began sharing personal stories and the common factor that came up was stress. We instantly became passionate about wanting to promote our emotional well-being. Many were talking about the academic rigor that was accompanied by the lack motivation, fatigue, and minimal sleep. We decided, why not make this our project? After unanimously agreeing, we began brainstorming. We had many posters filled with ideas such as creating parent workshops that will allow parents to educate themselves on mental illness, especially being in a predominantly Hispanic and Black community where it is not really acknowledged. Handing out positive affirmation cards along with music and dancing events were our priorities. Finally, we decided to create a self-care day where students can learn techniques on how to treat themselves. According to research, " more than 90% of people who die by suicide show symptoms of a mental health condition". Self harming victims are 5 times likely to be girls and more 2/3 of anti depressants are mostly prescribed to girls. The team was driven to carry this plan out.
Process- Team Planning and Team EventsThe Girls Build team met weekly during lunch in school. We were then divided into groups consisting of the Food Committee, Guests for Workshops/Agenda/Budget, Logistics for Campus Facility use, and Recruitment Committee. Each group was responsible for ensuring the established goals were met. At the end of the week, all of the committees mixed and mingled to share new updates or if they needed assistance from each other. We also used the Remind and GroupMe applications to discuss our plans leading up to the final event.
The Love Yourself Campaign was a day before Valentines Day. The purpose of this event was to communicate the importance of loving ourselves first! It is important to be satisfied and happy with ourselves prior to our special loved ones. During lunch we handed out inspirational quotes attached with a lollipop to students. Students also had to fill out a " I love myself because.." We were then able to create a collage with all the " I love myself because.." reasons and hung them all around campus. Middle school students were touring West Adams Preparatory High School and we took this wonderful opportunity to promote the importance of health & wellness. The music and dancing atmosphere created by the team attracted students to our event. We created posters and handed out candies while simultaneously encouraging girls to join the Girls Build team of West Adams for their upcoming school year.
Our second event was a Dance-Off that took place on campus at West Adams Prep High School. Music is proven to serve as a stress-reliever especially in high school. Providing food and other refreshments was definitely much appreciated by all participating students. We truly enjoyed watching our peers enjoy the relaxing atmosphere of the music. We raffled goody bags to our top winners that spent the most time dancing and playing musical chairs.
We concluded our event with a Panther Wellness day. We primarily focused on underclassmen and therefore we recruited about 50 girls that were 9th and 10th graders to participate. The importance of wellness, along with the components to living a stress-free life was restated in this session. Nutrition, exercise routines, social relationships and spirituality were some of the many topics in this session. We also promoted the resources available such as Head-space, Buddy Project, Let's talk mental health among others. Lastly, we handed out a goody bag to each of our girls. The pens, journals, stress balls, and the T-shirt was an amazing giveaway experience.
Outcomes
The Girls Build team are very determined, young leaders that have gained the necessary worth ethic to create and finish a project. Meeting our objective of promoting mental health awareness was extremely rewarding. We were able to make a small but significant impact on the lives of others. We know our project was a success because we were able to create a very intimate and trustworthy connection in the events. Girls sharing their personal experience and how they moved past that obstacle was very heartbreaking. Learning about the day to day struggles most girls endure only fueled our passion for promoting the importance of mental health. Communicating with other organizations about our objective and receiving feedback about our events was also very beneficial to our group. We learned how to be more organized and we began building our networking connections. The ability to create a project from scratch was a success.
Reflection
Originally, our plan was to reach out to nearby middle school students and have a full immersive day consisting of different workshops teaching students how to treat themselves and providing them resources. At first, we wanted to provide these services to 8th graders because the transition from middle school to high school is just as hard as transitioning from high school to college. However, as time progressed, we decided to focus on the underclassmen from our high school. Contacting organizations was one of our greatest challenges. Weeks before our final event, our confirmed organizations were unable to participate. However, Our backup plan was the Panther Wellness center of our high school saved our project. This was a very valuable experience because we learned how difficult it is to contact organizations and most importantly, to always have a back up plan. Although we were very determined on our initial plan, we were very flexible and we were able to carry out our objective differently from what we had expected. In the end, promoting mental health awareness was a success.