Exciting changes here at MINDS!
The MINDS office is looking a little different during this year’s monsoon season! It is bustling with all sorts of new faces and activity.
Vasundhara, a long-time staff member and social worker with us, has taken on a bigger role as Program Director. This summer, she successfully transitioned MINDS through our new partnership with the Live, Love, Laugh Foundation. We would also like to introduce a new MINDS staff and social worker, Chintan! Chintan is already doing great work in the field with his persistent and friendly attitude.
There are also three different groups of university students interning for the foundation. One, is the University of Washington GlobeMed’s GROW team from Seattle, Washington! They have been partnered with MINDS for 3 years now, and send a group of four interns each summer to build a relationship and do any needed work. This summer the interns will be setting up and giving presentations to English primary and secondary schools on anxiety, stress, and depression.
Two MPH students from Mt. Sinai are working with MINDS to conduct research on mental health awareness within the Anganwadi and Asha working communities! These two interns will collect 100 survey samples from both urban and rural areas, so they have a lot of work to do this summer. Finally, there are two new, year-long interns from Parul University. They are both working on a bachelor’s degree in social work. They are already an incredible asset to the MINDS team!
This large, new team is already hard at work on a few different projects. Stay tuned for more to come!
21. July 22,2016
School education programs this week!
This past week, MINDS began work on our Live, Love, Laugh collaboration in school programming.We have been putting together and editing English and Gujarati presentational Powerpoints geared towards both primary and secondary school children. In these presentations MINDS staff and GROW interns will present specifically on the stigma and treatments surrounding anxiety, stress, and depression.
Anxiety, stress, and depression are relevant to school children due to pressures of school work, hormonal changes, and growing expectations. 6-7% (70 million) of India’s population suffers from mental health concerns, and India has the highest rate of youth suicides. These are facts that cannot be ignored, and that is why MINDS aims to present to as many urban and rural Gujarati schools as possible.
On Monday we went by three urban, English schools to ask permission from their principals to give presentations. The presentations usually last around 45 minutes, and we have made them both interactive and visually stimulating for the children. We will also give pre and post assessments to gage the success of the program and the information gained by the school children. Two of the three schools were extremely receptive to our ask. They understood our mission and the need to present this important information. We should have presentations set up with these two schools within a week or two.
On Tuesday and Wednesday we went to five rural, Gujarati primary and secondary schools in the Waghodiya Taluka to ask their principals’ permission to give Gujarati presentations. The Gujarati presentation is exactly the same as the English presentation, just in Gujarati. All five schools granted their permission, and one school wants us to come back and give a demo presentation before setting up a full one.
Like the urban schools, we will be scheduling the rural school programs in the next two weeks, so MINDS staff will be extremely busy for the next few weeks giving presentations!
Stay tuned for more!