PROJECT PROFILE

Project Partner:

The National Alliance on Mental Illness, Santa Cruz

Team Members:

E Zawicki, Elizabeth Williams

Main Tech Tools:

Social Media Campaign, Canva, Zoom, Instagram

Organization Needs:

Active posting and content that promotes their services on social media

A clear communication of free online resources and programming

Establishing a digital presence to further build an online community around mental illness
Better iterate their program goals, work, on social media
Relay their message of hope and awareness

Our Solutions:

Host a social media campaign on Instagram by designing, promoting, and posting regularly.

Utilize our knowledge in digital content design and posting strategies to support the organization's needs
Supplement digital approaches of mental health care by hosting a five week online support group covering topics that are relevant to impacts caused by COVID-19

Project Outcomes

Increased followers by 90%
Consistency across the Instagram page
A deeper connection to the digital community
More exposure to NAMI Santa Cruz County's free support services

Project Milestones

E and Elizabeth teamed up through their common interest in mental health education and advocacy
Human Race Campaign: NAMI Santa Cruz Raises 40k
Designed and implemented a support group for 5 weeks during the summer
Hosted a social media campaign throughout October
Created, recorded and facilitated a staff training video

the everett student team

Project Description

During impacts of COVID-19, mental health support is more important than ever. That’s why Everett students partnered with NAMI Santa Cruz County. During their project initiation phase, the students created and facilitated their own COVID-19 support group and ran a social media campaign to connect with the surrounding community and support their mental health needs.

Check out their work, @namisantacruzcounty on Instagram!

OUR NAMI SANTA CRUZ COUNTY PARTNERS

Hugh McCormick Noeli Perez huehugh1982@gmail.com noeli@namiscc.org

Check out some examples of our digital designs below!

OUR APPROACH TO TECH

Tech was used throughout our project to promote NAMI Santa Cruz County's free and remote services. These programs include managing crises, self-care, stress management, living in recovery, and building support. We digitally designed graphic content using Canva to increase people's awareness of free available services and to support the public's digital connection to NAMI Santa Cruz. Moreover, we worked to better illustrate the organization on social media and further promote their message of hope, inclusion, empowerment, compassion, and fairness.

Supporting Mental Health Efforts Through A 5 Week Online Support Group

With the increase of mental health needs during the nation-wide pandemic, we felt it was necessary to supplement support services by creating and facilitating our own support groups. The group was 5 weeks long and addressed helpful topics such as staying connected with others, coping with feeling out of control, setting boundaries, and dealing with stress and anxiety.

Check out an example of a support group we designed and facilitated!

social media training:

OUR APPROACH TO PROJECT SUSTAINABILITY

NAMI Social Media Training

We designed a social media training to pass on the skills we learned throughout our project initiation. Furthermore, we wanted to ensure the organization had adequate support while transitioning the social media work to their team. By recording our training and providing NAMI Santa Cruz County with a video and a copy of the slideshow presentation, we ensured they had future access to the training and are able to use it for future reference.

Main Lessons Learned

During our project initiative, we used a tech for social change approach. We learned a lot, but the highlighted lessons are to go for it, even when it feels daunting or unachievable. Tech proved to be an effective tool, especially due to COVID-19 shelter in place orders.

Resilience building was an essential skill in our project planning and initiation phase. Embodying a growth mindset is an integral piece of social enterprise work. Our growth was greatly due to our team dynamic and our ability to remain compassionate and communicative.

Effectively addressing the social problem entailed constant re-assessment and viewing changes with a critical problem-solving lens. We had to remain resilient and in a mindset of skill-building, learning, and openly communicating with each other and all parties involved.

ANALYZING THE TRAINING IMPACT THROUGH A SURVEY

HIGHLIGHTS THE OF SURVEY RESULTS

PARTICIPANT FEEDBACK

SURVEY RESULTS INDICATED NAMI STAFF FELT A MORE COMPREHENSIVE UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIAL MEDIA AFTER THE TRAINING

CHECK OUT THEIR WEBSITE

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