We are delighted to share a blog written by Salma Abdallah, a student at Makassed Khaled Bin Al Walid, Lebanon who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2018-19 Global Goals Competition.
Their project ‘Getting out of the Shadow’ is among over 620 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
Treating mental illnesses will cause development in the Lebanese society given the fact that a great portion of its population is psychologically unwell which hurdles development in other aspects.
We intend to set our students’ minds free of diseases and struggle.
Project Summary
In Lebanon, and local community, mental diseases are on the rise which threat development in any other area. For example, depression -a common type of mental disease- can hurdle his academic achievement. As a school, we decided to face this kind of problem to free our students’ minds and spirit of those diseases that handicap, and limit, our thinking and achievements. Our participating group has managed to organize meetings with students to speak out about their lives and personal struggles and opinions, naming the activity ‘positive tea’ and that’s held on weekly bases inside the school. We have also posted encouraging posters around our school that reflect our willingness to help out anybody struggling within their minds, and we have received an abundance of response
Our Journey
During our journey we gained much information after performing researches on the issues and ways of solving it to be able to implement the right way. We don’t want to mess up in something as sensitive as the human brain that holds within it thoughts, feelings of sadness, grief, happiness and joyfulness. We learned about types of personalities, about how trauma affects people differently. We even improved our social skills and creativity. Most important of all, we managed to maintain team work, coordinate and distribute roles and planning, hence there was more than one thing to work on: the social media website to ensure many people know about us, the work inside the school and our meeting with students . Photography was enhanced since we had done a video of us giving awareness on the subject of mental health. And we have more creative ideas to reach our aims each and everyday. Our challenge lies in widening our circle of effect, to make our ideas reach places beyond our students and school.
The Next Chapter
The GSL goals are set to make the world a potential better place biologically, psychologically and economically. Treating mental illnesses will cause development in the Lebanese society given the fact that a great portion of its population is psychologically unwell which hurdles development in other aspects. We look forward for professionals and potential companies to adopt our vision to implement it on a larger scale and challenge mental diseases ,treat the unwell in the Lebanese community
The 2018-19 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2019. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
