A Grade 12 student started and launched a hashtag online #CHHSLetsTalk to raise money for the Canadian Mental Health Association in his aim to support mental health and to promote awareness among his fellow teenagers.
Brett Rothery, of Calgary, Canada, successfully launched a campaign in his goal to promote mental health awareness among teenagers and his fellow students in Crescent Heights High School. In his campaign, he is asking his fellow students to donate five cents for the cause for every tweet in Twitter and post in social media sites like Instagram and Facebook.
In the first nine hours after he posted his campaign, Rothery was able to exceed his goal of 10,000 tweets. Aside from that, he even advertised about his Twitter campaign in his school that eventually reached many people in his community. It was an instant hit and was able to reach people from other countries such as Malaysia and Japan.
Mental health problems among children and teenagers are on the rise for the past years. The alarming increase in mental health issues among teens is the concern of many parents worldwide. Rothery himself suffered from depression since he came out as gay. Hence, he started this campaign to help other teens who are also battling mental health issues.
According to the Principal of Crescent Heights High School, Jackie Chapman-Brown, the school aims to promote student voice and she says that this campaign was easy to support.
"We really believe that our students aren't the leaders of tomorrow, our students here are the leaders of today. This initiative is just one example of how they have proven themselves when they get involved in social issues and how capable they are of taking on the challenge of dealing with those issues straight on," she said.
The campaign even caught the attention of Mayor Naheed Nenshi and said, "I think kids are a little bit afraid of being judged. That's why we've been doing all this so we can say openly, 'It's not an issue with you. It's an imbalance in chemistry, and it's something that can be fixed, and it's something that you can talk about."
The school can only donate $500 to the cause but Vincent St. Pierre who watched the Twitter campaign has pledged to match the school's donation.
"I have three siblings, two of them have schizophrenia with a dual diagnosis with autism and I have another sibling with autism. so when you go out into the community and you talk about these issues, it gets it more personal and more understanding and you start to generate a sense of empathy," St. Pierre said.
