Community Feature:
PEACE OF MIND
Hi CIS! We are Peace of Mind (POM), CIS’ mental health advocacy group. We hope to raise awareness in our school community by creating a safe space for everyone to learn and share about mental health. We aim to implement different educational and support-based programs to encourage a more extensive understanding, and break the unspoken stigma around mental health through starting more conversations. Through the establishment of POM, we’ve been able to gather a group of like-minded students to work together. And during the process of researching different trends and illnesses, we’ve been able to expand our knowledge on the topic individually. A big part of our mission is to exercise empathy as we truly believe that spreading compassion and kindness is the most effective way of building a collectively-enjoyable CIS community. One of the biggest concerns that parents, teachers, and students likewise share, is stress. It’s easy to overlook the stress indications that our body is telling us. For example, sacrificing sleep has weaved itself into a part of IB culture. And it’s through constant reinforcements that students are finally becoming more aware of their health needs and how seemingly-insignificant habits can truly hinder their capabilities, both inside and outside the classroom. This school year, our team at POM has been focusing on a variety of projects to further improve our school’s awareness of mental health. We started off the year with the launch of our website (www.peaceofmindhk. org). In doing so, we hope to have created an easily-accessible hub for mental health resources curated by our members, and also exhibit our past initiatives. During our annual mental health week in October, 30
ISSUE 24
XIAO HUA
