Our History

Jorge and Ernest met in 2017 when they formed a TED Ed Club at Colton High. The goal was to empower students' voice at their school. In 2019 they held the first TEDx event at Colton High School. The event was themed around wellness, a theme which Ernest had become very passionate about after his involvement in development a student wellness center at Colton High School. The idea of a Wellness Center at their own school became a reality on October of 2019. Colton High School now has a functioning Wellness Center where its students receive counseling and other mental health resources.

In the summer of 2019, Jorge and Ernest were chosen among a handful of other students and educators from around the world to be apart of the 15th cohort of Bezos Scholars sponsored by the Bezos Family Foundation. Through this program and joined by other amazing scholars, they attended the 2019 Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen Colorado. There, they both had a chance to hear well known people talk about mental health and other related topics. As part of the Bezos Scholar's program, each scholar pair were challenged to create a community change project for their own communities. Continuing their work with mental health, Jorge and Ernest decided to organize and host the first ever Wellness Fair at Colton High School.

Knowing that they needed a core team to help organize and hold the Wellness Fair, they decided that not only did they want to organize and host the fair but to start conversations around the idea of mental health on their campus. In order to do that, they also created a student Wellness Club. The club was aimed at extending the fair to an ongoing year round project in order to promote positivity and wellness through events and activities on campus for students and staff. The Wellness Fair was extremely successful hosting about 1,500 students from 3 schools and speakers such as Tim Storey.

With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, Jorge and Ernest decided to think outside the box in order to maintain the conversation around mental health alive even during the period of school closures. It was then that they began to set in motion their plans to start an online repertoire of curated videos with strategies on how to overcome mental issues. That's when OneSimpleQuestion.org was born. The idea is to create conversations with real people all around the world about their tips, tricks, and experiences when they're feeling down. Hence the question, "What do you do to lift yourself up when you are feeling down?" With your help, we hope to shine light on the stigma attached to mental health and provide resources to help heal the world. Do you want to be part of the solution to the mental health crisis? Please sign up HERE to record your OneSimpleQuestion.org video. It only takes a couple of minutes to make a difference for someone in need!

Contact us

onesimplequestion.org@gmail.com