Mental Health
Wellness4Washtenaw, from seven to over 5 schools
Avantika Nair leads Wellness4Washtenaw, a student-run mental health initiative in Washtenaw County that she says has reached 800 students through its events this year.
Wellness4Washtenaw started with seven people. "Seven of us sat down at Wellness4Washtenaw's (W4W) first meeting, and none of us had the same reason for being there," Avantika Nair says. She leads it now. W4W is student-run. It works with BIPOC and low-income students on mental health, in Washtenaw County.
She traces her own involvement to a personal observation. "As a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) student, I've faced barriers to mental wellness," she says. During high school she overextended herself without recognising it. "mental health wasn't 'real' in my culture," she says. She only noticed after seeing mental health promoted online. "I realized other students likely felt the same way I did, without knowing why," she says.
“There's no one to better represent underserved communities than determined individuals from those communities.”
Avantika Nair
W4W runs student workshops, community resource fairs and interviews with student identity groups at her IB school, Washtenaw International High School. Annually, she says, they talked to eight different student groups, including the Indian-American Student Association, Black Student Union, and Queer Student Association, and presented what they learned to the school's Student Support Team. She reports 800 students reached through W4W events this year.
The largest event is what she calls the annual "Spring into Health and Wellness Fair." This year's fair, she says, ended with over 13 booths and more than 100 participants; through pre-and-post surveys, she reports an 80 percent increase in the number of students who were aware of local mental health resources and felt they were accessible.
W4W has since expanded to over 5 schools in her district and received nonprofit status, she says. She names 13 local mental health organisations as partners who have tabled at the fair and have invited W4W to other events. The team, she says, "consists of seven," and "apart from myself" includes "Anantika Nair, Dyuthi Aryasomayajula, Daniel Giddings, Mugdha Gupta, Aanchal Cholkar, Alexa Jacob, and Ruby Cardinal-Hagan." Her vision, she says, is to widen W4W's reach through government advocacy and to initiate branches in schools across Washtenaw District, starting with the two schools that have students from all nine districts in her area and often work with displaced or incarcerated youth.