Our Impact
A summary on My Good Brain’s community impact in Year One
2021: A Year of Bridging Psychology and Art
It’s been one year since the launch of My Good Brain, and we are so amazed by the amount of work we have accomplished thus far.
In the past twelve months, our organization has grown from a vision that our CEO & Founder had during the pandemic to an active and growing online resource for children and families.
Our organization’s growth reached a whole new level the moment we began to have volunteers join My Good Brain as our Mental Health Ambassadors.
From here, many things became possible.
Our Growth
As an organization, we grew in numbers after four months when we opened our doors to the community and recruited volunteers for support. We are proud of our team of Mental Health Ambassadors who have worked diligently and with such relentless passion for children’s mental health. They are the backbone of our organization and are a gift to our greater community. And we keep growing!
Our Creativity
As a team, we have navigated stay-at-home orders and adapted to online Zoom arts and crafts events, helping children find creative outlets that are not only fun but educational. Our focus was on helping parents and teachers by providing ample resources about mental health topics (anxiety, depression) and current impact on youth during lockdown. More than ever, we found ourselves putting our own creative minds together to problem-solve the limitations and challenges that we faced.
Our Accomplishments
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In Year One (since February 2021), we have donated more than 90 My Good Brain Tool Kits to local elementary school students in the Oakland, Hayward, and Union City area. School counselors and staff provide them to their students who are in need of supplementary mental health support outside of the school setting.
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We have hosted four free online arts and crafts events for children for all ages. Each arts and crafts event is focused on an educational topic about mental health, and the art activities teach children healthy coping skills that they can use (example: identifying emotions, gratitude practice).
We have also been able to host two successful in-person arts and crafts booth events in San Francisco and share more about how children can use art for mental wellness.
So far, we have had more than 40 children previously attend our Sunday Art Club events, with attendees from all over California.
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We have been diligently creating helpful resource infographics and blog posts to share research-based facts about various mental health topics. From bullying prevalence rates, the link between sports and self-esteem, and more, we hope to share credible and useful materials to make an impact on children’s mental health and wellness.
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We recognize the importance of highlighting adult role models in our local community who take care of their mental health doing things they love—be it art, play, hobbies, or sports. With the Kids At Heart campaign, have shared about seven inspirational individuals who engage in their favorite activities to stay young, mentally strong, and kids at heart!
Financials
Our initial year involved a great amount of learning about the nonprofit world and focused on how to raise funds to support our first program, the My Good Brain Tool Kits. The pre-launch Virtual Art Auction fundraiser kickstarted our efforts and gave us the opportunity to start sharing art therapy tool kits to our surrounding elementary school students in the East Bay Area. As a small but mighty team, we quickly learned how to effectively work with what we had and use our team members’ individual strengths to further our cause. Through word-of-mouth, we were able to reach others and gain individual donations from generous supporters who share our mission to use art as a vehicle for change in teaching psychological tools for adaptive functioning in youth.
Our Goals for 2022
Our 2022 Goals for My Good Brain:
Reach more students in the SF, Berkeley, & Oakland area with our Tool Kit Program
Create new partnerships with local organizations focused on children’s well-being
Host more online and in-person arts and crafts events
Expand our current programs to focus on teen mental health
We can’t wait to see where this 2022 takes our organization further. As the state of our nation evolves, we hope that more children and families will feel safer, happier, healthy, and at ease in this year ahead.