From Fall 2019 to Spring 2020, I collaborated with a Penn Nursing friend and a Pre-Med friend to start a community-wellness initiative based in Philadelphia, which eventually became a finalist of Penn’s prestigious President’s Engagement Prize.
We wanted to enable young Asian Americans to build their mental health toolkit, grow their resiliency, and leverage social entrepreneurship to improve the mental health dialogue and outcomes for this community, of which we are a part.
We called this initiative Bloom.
*Content Warning: suicide.
The three of us felt deeply passionate about mental wellness and resiliency for young Asian Americans. The mental health taboo hit home for us, as we each experienced our own challenges with mental health and how that intersected with our upbringing and cultural norms. When we researched more, we discovered the urgent need to address mental health for this population.
For example, we learned that among same-aged peers (15-24) across all racial groups, young Asian Americans had the 2nd highest rate of suicide. Yet, they have the lowest mental healthcare utilization rate. (See our proposal for citations.) How can we even begin to possibly address this problem?
*Note, AA refers to Asian Americans in the above graphic.
We reached out to both new and familiar folks at local Philadelphia organizations to co-create and iterate on our idea for Bloom. Would such a program fill a real gap in their programming and align with the needs of the community? We also consulted Penn faculty with expertise in mental health, teen health, community engagement, and more.
After receiving inputs and support from established community organizations, healthcare professionals, and Asian American teens in Philadelphia, we submitted our proposal for Penn’s Presidents’ Engagement Prize, outlining the purpose of our program, how we would implement it effectively, and why we were uniquely positioned to do it well. If we won the prize, we would obtain funding for a full year to implement our program post-graduation.
We had high hopes that Bloom could be the first Engagement Prize-funded project that focused solely on Asian Americans. However, we only finished as a finalist (top 6) and didn’t win the prize.
While we were disappointed and frustrated, we felt so grateful for the immense support we received from our community partners. With 9 letters of intent, and our helping 2 of the organizations (AAI and PCDC, as seen in the above graphic) actually implement parts of Bloom in their programming later in 2020, we validated how important it was for something like Bloom to exist.
I feel lucky to have gotten to work on such a meaningful project with my friends Heidi and Chris. This experience was incredibly informative for each of us as we navigate our careers and figure out how we’ll leave a lasting impact in our communities.
You can find an excerpt from our proposal for Bloom here.