Hi everyone, my name is Karen Huang and I am currently a rising senior attending high school within the Los Angeles region in California. A few months ago, my team members and I established our own Civic Action Project as part of the CRF's Expanding Horizons Institute program. My team and I's Civic Action Project is based upon the lack of mental health services given to the homeless population within California. Our mission is to ensure that the homeless population in California are able to receive quality rehabilitation, job training, and mental health services as part of a way to allow the homeless to re-enter society with proper mental health care, a steady job, and becoming productive members of society. Though California has recently built affordable housing units for the homeless, it simply is not enough and places a bandaid on the issue, as the homeless would be unable to perform tasks without a clear, healthy mindset.
The first initiative of our project was to create and conduct a survey to collect the multitude of perspectives from local Californian residents aged 16 and up. After receiving over 40 survey responses, we decided to gather all the statistics and viewpoints of those who took our surveys to craft an email template. This email template would be used to reach out to our local elected officials as a way to get everyone's voices and concerns out there and ensure some substantial change could be made for the homeless. After several weeks of waiting, a few of my team members were able to receive responses back from the local elected officials, where the officials agreed upon our concerns and proposals.
Though we did not make as big of an impact as anticipated, we recently decided to amplify and spread our message to other various nonprofit organizations on our newly created Instagram page. Our Instagram username is @calihomelessproject. Feel free to give us a follow.
On our page, we intend to spread awareness on the lack of mental health services given to those suffering from mental illness, and how this lack of care results in an increase in homelessness. By spreading awareness on Instagram, we intend to urge our main audience, nonprofit organizations, to take initiative by reaching out to their local elected officials or reaching out to homeless nonprofit organizations to help provide free, federally funded mental health/rehabilitation services to the homeless, newly discharged psychiatric patients, or anyone else suffering from mental illness who is on the verge to the route of homelessness.
With the help of the Constitutional Rights Foundation's help on how to analyze and select CAP Issues and public policies, my team and I were able to select an issue, which is homelessness, that deeply resonated with our current surroundings and communities. The help of CRF enabled my team and I to take action as global citizens and planted the seeds for the start of our project, Cali Homeless Project.
