As a common teenager, we know better than anyone that numerous students at this stage go through overwhelming stress due to various reasons such as grades, relationships, or any personal problems. We are also aware of the fact that depressed students find it hard to get better by themselves, or even to seek help. Thus, we are the Dahlia society which studies and researches about mental illness, and aims to reduce stigma and raise awareness of mental illness in order to foster a healthy and beautiful spirit within the school community.
To briefly introduce our progress from last year, our biggest achievement was the “Hee-mang narae” community service. There is a social cooperative organization called “Heemang-Narae” in Jeju which consists of people with developmental disabilities. Last year, we conducted a school tour with 16 developmentally disabled people and 6 staff from Heemang Narae. We’ve prepared a variety of workshops to enjoy together within the school departments. Starting with some icebreaker games in the drama studio, we moved to the sports hall for sports activities, taught K-pop dance at the dance studio, and finally made pinch pots at the art studio together. It was indeed an extremely successful, meaningful and memorable experience that could be hardly done throughout our school life. Our contact with Heemang Nareae not only ended up with the school tour but also fundraised with diffusers and wood crafts that were handmade by them at the christmas bazaar and the medical fair.
Do you remember the small white notes that were stuck everywhere around the school last year? It was those that had secret positive messages that were for students to freely take. There was also a ‘Take what you need’ board which students wrote their own encouraging quotes and stick or literally take what they wanted. For the boarding students, we used the saturday evening to try out activities on ‘body image’ which was to raise self-esteem. Other than these, we also put up movies regarding mental health such as ‘inside out’ for KS3 and ‘I am sam’ for KS4 on the world mental health day (10th of October), or published infographics/posters about mental health issues in SWAG’s well-being wonderings magazine.
This year, we are continuing our activities and cooperation with SWAG to enhance and support the student’s state of well-being. These are some brief plans and activities achieved for this 20-21 academic year. First, we’ve actively promoted activities during the psychology enrichment week. We also provided briefings for KS3 and KS4 students who are planning to take IB psychology. We also opened up some discussions on several topics, and donated to the Korea Foundation of Persons with Disabilities to provide financial aid for disabled people who are suffering due to COVID. Now, we are planning to share presentations regarding jobs related to psychology careers, research about PTSD/depression. We will continue collaborating with the SWAG in regards to Well-being woderings or mental health awareness week. We would also like to contact the Heemang Narare for fundraising as well.
Currently, we are having a regular meeting on every Monday break time. We are always open to anyone who is psychologically or mentally suffering, who wants to become happier, who dreams to become an adult who heals others, or anyone who is keen to deeply study about mental health in terms of psychology. If you are intrigued by any of these contents, please feel free to contact Erin Lee in year 12 (yslee22@pupils.nlcsjeju.kr) or Clara Kim in year 12 (thkim22@pupils.nlcsjeju.kr).
