From August to November 2024, Xiaojie Qin, a psychotherapist and the director of CandleX, was invited to provide technical support as a consultant for UNICEF's 2024 China's World Children's Day Campaign, themed "Mental Health in Schools." Moreover, she involved her mentee, Katie Lai, a high school student, in this campaign process to adopt a teenage-consulted approach.
In terms of adolescent mental health, Xiaojie's current scope of work includes seeing teenage clients as their therapist, managing and executing CandleX's Teens Empowerment Project, and providing various trainings in schools to both students and faculty on topics such as bullying, psychological first-aid, and mental illness trainings for teachers. Additionally, during her tenure with a renewed international NGO, Xiaojie served as the China representative on the International Task Group for Mental Health and Psychosocial Wellbeing.
UNICEF China's World Children's Day campaign for 2024, themed "Mental Health in Schools," aimed to build upon the previous "Stronger Mind, Stronger You" initiative by focusing on mental health for both adolescents and younger, school-age children.
In this context, Xiaojie was engaged to provide technical support to ensure that the campaign's messaging was professionally crafted and aligned with best practices in discussing mental health. Her role was crucial in reviewing video scripts, social media posts, promotional materials, and play scripts for the World Children's Day event, ensuring that they achieved optimal results.
Throughout the three-month process, Xiaojie provided valuable insights and recommendations, along with Katie’s input, ensuring that the messaging was clear, concise, and resonated with the intended audience. Xiaojie's expertise was instrumental in shaping the campaign's narrative and tone, making it more impactful and relatable. Her prompt and thorough responses provided clarity and reassurance to stakeholders and the audience alike, and were greatly appreciated.
As a result, Katie Lai, a teenager consulted on a high-level campaign project with UNICEF, was empowered and gained valuable insights from real-life practice on mental health work. She worked on specific consultancy tasks with guidance from Xiaojie. This was a unique and special opportunity, and it aligned with CandleX's Teens Empowerment Project, which aims to provide teens with real-life experiences to help them understand the theory taught in schools and practice in day-to-day work, and better understand their own strengths and areas of interest.
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