The Journey
I was very excited to be working with UNYA, an organization dedicated to supporting indigenous youth. Having known very little about the indigenous community, I was eager to explore this new learning opportunity. It was saddened me to learn of the many struggles this population has faced. This group was denied access to their own resources and traditions that were vital to their welfare and survival. Consequently, this community faced even greater marginalization poverty, diseases, and violence.
UNYA has a growing population of youths suffering from mental health issues as well as substance use. These numbers only increased when the lockdown began. Unfortunately, access to clinical counselors is very limited at the site and currently, there are 45 patients awaiting counsel. Myself and my team members were asked to collaborate with UNYA and create an intervention to support those on the waiting list.
I was eager to dive into this project as this was my area of expertise. Familiar with a wide variety of mental health disorders as well as issues with substance use, I have vast experience navigating phone calls from those in line for clinical counseling. I am aware of how difficult it can be to support these individuals and how important it is to create awareness of this issue.
BRAINSTORMING…
When putting together our ideas, we took into consideration the specified demographic. What were these youths in need of, how could we remind them that they were not forgotten? We wanted to ensure they weren't isolated during this difficult period and provide a template that encouraged them to keep track of their emotions. Additionally, we wanted to provide a history for the counselors to access when beginning sessions, hoping this would ease the youth's transition into therapy.
The first meeting with our designated liaison at UNYA was very pleasant. Collectively we had a lot of questions that needed answering in order to further our goals; all our questions were met with detailed answers proving extremely helpful. Our UNYA representative was fascinated by the ideas had proposed to support the youth and was eager to implement as many as possible. This was very encouraging, as initially, we were concerned that our ideas may have been outdated. As a group, we wished to steer away from an intervention that required technology as although it is very prominent in today's society we felt it was overused and can at times increase stress levels. We were informed of the limited funding the organization had access to, due to governmental discrimination, something to reflect on going forward. It was safe to say the first meeting was a success and we were looking forward to continuing our work with UNYA.
Unfortunately, we were not able to have any further contact with this particular UNYA representative as she left the organization for personal reasons. Undertaking such work can be very stressful especially when you cannot make changes as you see fit or when you are unable to help everyone. At this point, I really began to acknowledge the strength of individuals who shoulder such roles in communities as such a job can be very daunting at times.
Our group efforts continued despite not having any contact with UNYA for over two weeks. When finally getting in touch with the organization again we learned that many of the ideas just weren’t plausible at this time due to covid and the limited resources of the organization. We wanted to encourage the youth, to go outdoors interact with the community in an effort to combat the hopelessness a lot of indigenous youths feel. Our aim was to make available spaces where those in need could visit, and be met by a peer mentor/non-specialist whom they would update on their wellbeing and engage in a creative activity that encourages body/mind positivity. However, many of the UNYA attendees were unvaccinated and governmental regulations require that all be vaccinated before occupying indoor spaces. Secondly, transportation in the area was very expensive, and getting youth to these proposed spaces would have been very difficult due to funding.
To be very honest it was quite disheartening to learn that we could not go ahead with our intervention as planned. As a group we were all so excited to action our ideas as we felt they would be very effective for these youth. We began working to reshuffle our ideas without decreasing the efficiency of our intervention. while taking into consideration transport, covid and financial restrictions.
A RESOLUTION
We decided to use UNYA as a crisis space for those on the waiting the list, upon reaching the site they will be able to use either laptops or iPad and log on to site where they can watch videos and write in a digital diary in the hope that’s this will help them release some of their initial stress. Our vision is for each individual on the waiting list to have a personalized log-in with access to mindfulness videos and other beneficial digital and or physical materials that meet their specific mental health concerns.
Nonetheless, we have not done away with our original ideas, we are ambitious that we will be able to action in the future. We will be appealing for funding and are confident more of the youth will be able to get vaccinated enabling them to utilize community spaces and be more hands-on with their mental health as they journey to strengthen their minds and bodies while awaiting counsel. To begin with, we will be making a bid to the department of transport in Vancouver asking them to support the transportation needs of these Indigenous youth.
I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and I honestly feel very inspired and I am eager to further my work with UNYA and support similar organizations in this sector.
