With the upcoming Thanksgiving break, UHS hosted its first community wellness event of the school year on Nov. 9 to express kindness to senior citizens and inspire gratitude on campus. 

The event was a collaboration between ASB Wellness Commissioners Shannon Hegarty and Jolie Roche, the Youth Action Team and the UHS Psychology Club, which aimed at helping students destress ahead of first-semester final exams.

According to Hegarty, the idea for the event was inspired by a past initiative aimed at promoting kindness through community service.

“Way back when [senior] Varsha Torpunuri and I were running an independent Psychology and Wellness Club, Varsha had the idea to host an event that donated to the organization ForLikeMinds,” Hegarty said. “After the event’s success, Jolie and I decided to model it on a school-wide level.”

With the help of the UHS Psychology Student Association and YAT, Roche and Hegarty brought a variety of activities to the event. Students were able to make custom buttons at YAT’s arts and crafts station, as well as write cards, promoting thankfulness and support from students to members of their community.

“We provided cards for students to write notes to their family and friends, or they could also write encouraging messages to patients in psychiatric units,” Roche said. 

Psychology Student Association President and senior Vibhas Ipilli shared that the significance of this collaboration event was also to increase exposure for the newly-formed Psychology Club.

“Hosting the wellness event with the ASB Wellness Commissioners was an amazing experience,” Ipilli said. “It was a great way for our club to have an outreach amongst our fellow Trojans, [and] we were able to publicize even more.”

Many considered the event a success, with over 200 cards written and delivered to patients at ForLikeMinds.

“I’m extremely happy with the turnout of the event,” Hegarty said. “Everyone seemed super engaged [and] it was an easy setup that gave us the opportunity to make an impact on mental health in our community.”

With the upcoming Wellness Week set to take place from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9, the UHS Wellness team encourages students to take the necessary steps to take care of their mental health while being thankful for those in their lives.

“We will gladly do this event again next year as it’ll get us established furthermore, and we, the Psychology Club, want to make [everyones] day better,” Ipilli said.