Youth Philanthropy Initiative (YPI) Project
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Finding an Issue
After getting into our group, we were tasked with researching a social issue, prevalent in our community. We decided to focus on "Discrimination against mentally ill people," as we collectively agreed that this is a moral wrong and should corrected. The mentally ill are often incapable of preventing or defending themselves from discrimination which makes this issue an attack against a vulnerable group of people. We found people ages 15 to 24 are being impacted by this issue, making our demographic young people our age.
Shortlisting a Charity
Once we had an issue we wished to tackle, we now had to find charities that aimed to tackle this issue. This project had a $5,000 grant on the line, which made winning an important statement for the mentally ill community. We narrowed down to 3 registered charities, being Mental Health Research Canada, Jack.org and Canadian Mental Health Association Halton. After careful discussion, we decided to focus on Jack.org, a large charity focused on educating the youth on this topic. We were seeking aid through awareness.
Interviewing
As a stage of this project, we were supposed to contact our charity, physically meet them and interview them and learn about the work they do in the charity. Unfortunately for us, our initial email was left unattended for the duration of the project, and we had to proceed on without direct data from our charity. We had still prepared potential interview questions and made other preparations in the event of their response.
Creating the Pitch
Pitching our charity was challenging without contact with them officially, however we tried our best. We used a simple design that had cartoonlike visuals to appeal to our audience. We presented this to our class as a whole, and were judged based on it. Unfortunately, we did not end up being selected to continue the project, however we took this a learning experience and moved on.
