Rooted Leaders: Hanon & Max
Supporting Mental Health for Teen Immigrants
How can we help immigrant, specifically teenage, populations with their mental health and education in an accessible way?
Hanon and Max were interested in addressing the gap in mental health services for immigrant communities, particularly teens. Scroll down to see what they learned!
KEY STAKEHOLDERS
Constituents: Recently Immigrated Youth/Teens
Hanon and Max recognized the struggles recently immigrated people faced and wanted to make a change. After zoning in on youth and teenage immigrants for their constituents, due to both Max and Hanon being that age, they worked to figure out how to best support this group. Their solution was an easily accessible, simple to read, and accurately natured mental health resources website.
Ally: Charity Organizations and Immigrants Themselves
Max and Hanon spoke to a variety of groups and people including many immigrants who provided their experiences and what they struggled with when they first moved. This provided Max and Hanon with resources and ideas for what to include on their project.
Key Decision Maker: Schools, Organizations, and Immigrants Themselves
In the future, Max and Hanon hope their website will spread via schools, charities, and by friends and families. They want their website and the topic (immigrant mental health) in general to become recognized and further advanced and respected.
Survey & Website
Max and Hanon sent out a survey and identified what immigrant teenagers were struggling with. After finding that mental health, financial preparation, and language barriers were their main concerns, Max and Hanon worked with their mentor — Jang, to create a website that encompassed all of these issues and resources on how to help them.
Max and Hanon partnered with their school, New West Charter, and organizations CPAF and KYCC, respectively, to spread their survey and reach as many people as possible. They also hope to continue working on their project in programs led by both CPAF and KYCC and expand it in order to spread more awareness and resources.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Check out Hanon & Max’s recommendations for others interested in better supporting the mental health needs of immigrant populations.
Promote language accessibility: We have learned that the key problem that is causing immigrant's struggle is language. Although Los Angeles is open to many cultures and have numerous immigrant residents, they still continue to struggle in almost all everyday life activities. Through this realization, we have decided to translate our website into multiple different languages so that our website can actually help immigrants who struggle with language barriers.
Continue education and awareness raising: In addition, by conducting a survey, we were able to get insights from many different perspectives and opinions that we were never able to come up with. For example, we were able to discover that many immigrants struggle in medical fields and taxes.