Tikkun Olam

Richmond Mental Health Consumer and Friends Society

By Alex and Aviva

The organization we chose is the Richmond Mental Health Consumer and Friends Society. This organization provides individual assistance to people who are recovering from a mental health illness and are receiving mental health services. The assistance will help people who take advantage of the programs to enhance their lives and succeed in reaching their personal goals. The assistance is provided by peer support workers who have been trained and have personal experiences with mental health illness. All of the workers provide support and encouragement in the stages of recovery from mental health illnesses. The relationship between a peer and a support worker usually lasts sixth months or until their goals are reached.

We chose this organization because we wanted to raise awareness about mental health illness. We felt that by volunteering at Richmond Mental Health Consumer and Friends Society we would be able to understand what it is like to live with a mental illness. We also wanted to understand the purpose of this organization by being able to meet people who have overcome their mental illness and have made strides toward reaching their personal goals.

Young people can help this organization by participating in daily activities such as going on walks, helping to make the participants lunches, playing fun games and drawing with them. We are also participating in weekly sessions’ along with Alex’s mother to learn how to improve people with mental illnesses life styles.

The main purpose of this project is to learn a way in which we can make a difference in the world. One way of reaching our goal is to help the people with mental illnesses overcome their problems. Hopefully we will be able to touch some of these people and help in some small way to improve their lives.

We are very excited to be involved in this important project. We are going to be able to help people and have fun at the same time. If everyone in our class just does a small mitzvah it will help make other peoples lives a little better.