After arriving in my hometown in mid-June, I reached out to the Mental Health Association of Enping (MHAE) to begin actualizing our proposal for the summer. Through the first in person meeting with the director of the MHAE and staff I will be working closely with, they expressed a concern that was unexpected to me. I knew working on a project in China as a student would be difficult, but I didn’t expect my status as a student that studies outside of China to be an issue. Even though I am a citizen of China, it turns not being a long term resident in China was an obstacle towards working on any projects with local organizations. The increased political tension between China and the United States for the past few years has influenced my ability to implement my project.
We realized we had to make some changes to our vision for the summer after some discussion about where to best spend our efforts for the next few months. We thought it would be unrealistic to work with the middle school since it was closed during the summer and the principal was uncertain about working with me. After lengthy discussion and careful consideration, we decided to shift our efforts towards the audience in the city of Enping. Specifically, we wanted to focus on hosting educational seminars targeting parents and their children. It was important to find a collaborator for this project because we need a space for the seminar and a channel to reach out to the appropriate audience. MHAE reached out to other local organizations in hopes to collaborate on the project together. Because most of the local organizations were associated with the Chinese government, they were unwilling to work with me due to my association with the US. After facing rejections from local organizations, we finally found a center in one of the districts in Enping to work with us.
We set up a meeting to discuss with the Head of the District Center about our plan with the educational seminars. The Head of the District mentioned similar issues that were discussed in my proposal of the project, such as disobeying parents and bullying in schools. We came to a conclusion for the seminar to focus on parents and children with the topics of healthy models of interactions between parent-child and introduction to mental health. The format of the event was two staff from the MHAE giving presentations to the parents and children individually. Then I bring everyone together to review the major takeaways of the presentations and discuss mental health issues and ways to combat them. At the end, we also gave them a gift, which is a game that could be played together with the parents and children. We made sure the whole event was interactive since the topic could be boring or hard to comprehend to some people. I made the poster for the event so the district could help us advertise. We were able to host two events, which included 30 families. We had children ranging from 6-13 years old, most of which came with one parent. Some parents also brought their neighbor’s children or their relatives’ children. The parents and children that came to the event seemed to appreciate the seminars and walked out with a smile on their faces.
This summer made me realize how difficult it is to tackle the issue of mental health in my hometown, let alone the whole country of China. I am not sure how impactful my service was with the two events, but it is a start to something incredibly challenging. My interactions with people at the MHAE made me appreciate the efforts they put into this cause and to make a difference in people’s lives. I want to be a part of that. I just need to find a better way given the reality of my residency and association with the US. It will not be easy and there are many obstacles along the way. But there is always a way. I want to find the way. In the end, I decided to leave the rest of the funding to the MHAE to support expenses for future educational seminars and to help disadvantaged children to receivetherapy. I saw this as the most realistic but yet helpful way of continuing the effort towards helping my hometown. Thank you to the Class of 1978 Foundation for providing me with the opportunity to scratch the surface of bettering mental health in my hometown.
