May 2022 Winners

Our video is meant to show what others think hope is or what they are hoping for. We hope that people will feel encouraged by this to share their hope with the world and not be scared to show their hopes and dreams.

My entry is about my friend called Ava who's been stressing out about her school work and extracurriculars. I want her to know that I will always be by her side and support her no matter what. And I hope through listening to this song, she can feel better and keep going.

People who really know me know just how hopeful I am about everything. From having hope that I will do a good job on the test to believing I can learn a new language at 5 years old (I moved to the US during that time). I always believe good will come no matter what. There is always something, even the tiniest detail, to have hope for.

My painting is based on when I had cancer when I was about five or six years old with Ewing's Sarcoma. I was in the hospital for a week every other week and I was attached to this panda bear stuffed animal that I got from the gift shop on the hospital's first floor. I brought the panda bear everywhere I went and it got me to the next day, which is why my painting's title is named "Tomorrow." In fact, I still have the panda bear by my bed today, and it's still giving me hope.

Over quarantine, I developed feelings of shyness and I found it hard to open up to people and new things. I felt very out of place, as if I was missing something in my life, for it was as though I was empty inside. But I eventually decided to open my bedroom window during one of my digital classes and, like magic, I felt free. Opening this path to nature allowed me to relax and realize the beautiful world we live in, and how even just a single breath of fresh air can connect you to endless, amazing experiences.

Personally, I really struggled with my mental health for awhile. But ‘they’ were always there. They were my light. My guide. They helped me out of that hole, that darkness, no matter how much I pushed them away. I didn’t want them to be my light. I didn’t want a ‘they.’ But they never left. They stayed. They returned, and they worked harder than before. My ‘they’ were my light. My guide. My hope.

Our entry is a painting with a quote about hope on it. We wanted to show that people can help others find hope instead of just showing ways of how to find hope. We felt that helping others can also help give yourself hope too.

I made visual art to encourage young people to find hope by being outside in nature. Whenever I feel stressed or in a challenging time, being in nature can help give me hope. Hiking is not only good exercise but also good for your mental health.

Love is being held by trees, hoping to rise above everything else. Despite the pain there is still a sky.

I allow myself to display my anger through my art. I remind myself I am more than a mental illness by telling myself I am creative, artistic and inventive. I have been learning how to cope with my mental illness by creating beautiful things through my artwork.

The bubble with words provides what gives that person hope to move forward. No matter how hard life got, those were their inspiration to keep going. The door represents the future and the good it will hold.

This paint reflects what my mind was going through while I was sick.

Our submission is about ideas to give you hope while going through a though time. We provided a few tips with tangible actions to take. The idea was to ensure that students have an opportunity to have "toolkit" in case of needing help.

My entry is about what I do to get through hard times in life and what I believe will help you get through those dark times. I also provide examples of what one might have to go through and how to keep on going even though it is hard sometimes. It could give readers hope and can motivate one to keep pushing even when things get rough.

A Cup of Tea' depicts how one can carry the weight of being cast out in society. However, sometimes all you need is a little push from yourself to realize that society does not define who you are, and the first step to being accepted in society is to accept yourself. Incorporating the past, present, and future in this work is meant to show people that who you were before and who you are now do not define the good you will give and receive in the future.

I decided to create this piece to represent the feelings of letting go. I have faced many situations where I have to stop and let go to move on and be happy. Everyone should know that no one is perfect and making mistakes are ok. I hope those who view my art piece find the courage in letting go of any tension they have kept within themselves.

“I am a first-generation Latino who will be attending The University of Irvine this fall. It’s cool to say that I will be the first in my family to attend a four-year university, but it comes with a lot of pressure. In this poem, I wrote about my struggles with being a first-generation student and my battle with imposter syndrome. Acknowledging these emotions on paper is good and art is my therapy. I hope my poem makes people feel seen and gives others an insight into what it feels like to be a first-generation student.”

I wanted to make a piece focusing on the recent events of the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court. I wanted to make a piece as a reminder of why this is so dangerous and affects every woman in the US and to also remind people that these laws on women's bodies are made by people who don’t take into consideration the difficult decisions women sometimes have to make and may have no experience with having a reproductive system.

This entire entry is based on climate change and global warming. Now we are reaching points where we are worsening the amount of carbon in our air by deforestation, we are ruining animals habitats such as the polar bears in the arctic, and weather patterns just keep on getting more and more unpredictable. I portray our earth in all her glory, plants and flowers adorning her hair. Water and our oceans that make up her skin. Although her face is cracked off, we have the part of the earth we still have yet to save and then the part we have lost to our own selfishness.

I chose this category because it is something that I feel very strongly about. I want peace and justice in the world. I want everyone to be treated equally and I want everyone to feel included and accepted no matter their race, gender, or sexuality.

I an an Indian and I feel a social and emotional struggle while trying to balance 2 different lifestyles/ethnicities and how society portrays me and how that can affect me.

My entry expresses my anxiety about the environment. Fear should not be seen as a weakness but strength because without fear there is no bravery. By painting this I expressed that with every new year I receive more knowledge which may scare me and crack the safety of the walls I have put up but the new information can also inform me about things that are happening in the world in which I may do something about.

We showed how people may not know others' backgrounds and what they could be feeling and not to judge them for it.

I chose this category because I felt that there was so much injustice in our world. I decided to make a social media post, sharing a few bullet points on how to be just in our lives.

"Dear Me, What If" is about the power of having dreams, and making them come true. Right now we are young, but all of us can accomplish great things if we take care of our mental health now. There are no limits on dreams, and each one of us can do anything we set our minds to. No matter what we become, we have the ability to change the world - one “if” at a time.

My film gives people the perspective of what it is like to be someone who thinks that their future is all that matters. It shows how much time I put into working, which impacted the time I was able to spend on myself. It's okay to be human and make mistakes. The main goal of my film was to tell others that we are all humans, not working robot and knowing when to stop is just as important as working hard.

My drawing represents an image of me reading and drinking water which shows how I am taking care of myself to cope with mental health. I have a dog named Benji on my side with the Mental Health Awareness Green Ribbon around his neck to represent how much my dog has increased my happiness. While taking my time into this drawing, I learned how much I've improved my mental health, I realized I was happy and not stressed as much.

Dear Future Max, Don't forget to take some time out to care for yourself! You can care for yourself when you lose yourself in music, when you are a part of nature and forget about all your worries when you're playing soccer! Love, Max

Dear Future Ava, You should encompass your hobbies of painting, meditation and healthy cooking into daily habits so you could always feel self love! Love, Ava

I wanted to show myself as I am now, holding the lime green ribbon representing mental health. For my future, I thought about action statements that would help me become the best that I can be. All of that ends at the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which would be my successful future where I’m happy, healthy, full of hope and loved.

My entry is about the job I want to have in the future. I hope to become an architect and create many buildings in this world. It would be fun to design houses and bring that creation to life. Architecture is something I would love spending the rest of my life doing.

We created a film around the idea of self-love and the journey that it can take to get there. The film follows a teenage girl who speaks to her future self in a heartfelt letter. She gives words of encouragement, hope, and most importantly, love as the one who knows her future self's hardships best.

I decided to use my little sister to represent my younger self to show my growth as a person. This was to show how I was able to persevere and grow up.

I wrote an email to my future self in which I share some ways to cope with stress.

Dear Jane shows that life gets better, and even the happiest people struggle, everyone does. Your future self is rooting for you and would give you a big hug if they could. I want people to know it’s okay to struggle right now, but it gets better.

The piece "Dear Me" depicts how I currently take care of my mental health--journaling and writing down my worries and stressors. I hope that one day, I can look back on all my journal entries as a fond reminder of the past, rather than as something that holds painful memories. Additionally, the background shows practices I wish to incorporate into my daily routine in the future to take better care of my mental health, such as meditating and taking better care of my body.

Kaylie created this drawing to show who she is now, and who she plans to be in the future. Her 2022 self holds the green ribbon of mental health to show she cares about her mental health. The drawing of her 2027 self is wearing all lime green- she wanted people to know she will follow her own action steps to good mental health to be the best she can be! Her goals are clearly designed to set her up for success- she wants to graduate high school ready to live her best life.

“‘I Know’ is a personal poem about what I know my future self will do eventually, because my present and future self are both trying to be the best version of ourselves. I want my future self to have hope in themselves, to have goals, ambitions, to continue doing or strive for the things I enjoy or make me happy. As a result of writing this poem, I'm again reminded of who I want to become, and I feel more at peace with self-reassurance.”

I chose this category because it really connects to me since I can get easily stressed. Writing a letter to my future self really allowed to me understand that there are many different ways on taking care of my mental health. To this day, I still practice the mental health tips to help take care of my mental health.

My piece is a letter to my future self. I chose this prompt to self reflect.

My entry is a letter to myself in the future, describing the events that I have gone through in the past year. It encourages my future self to reaffirm to values that I learned in the present, and discusses the role of mental health in our lives.

My entry talks about my goals for the next five years during high school and my first year of college. It focuses on the things I want to learn and overcome in order to grow as a person.

I chose the monthly prompt because I felt I could express my heart and my soul in words on the page, and be something that I would want to look back upon after graduating from high school to see how far I had come and if my dreams had changed. I also felt that this was a great way to honor my teacher who has had been a huge inspiration to me and taught me a great deal about myself and teaching.

My entry is about me,10 years from now. I want it to show how much someone can change, and has goals to change. I chose this category because it shows how many dreams and goals I have for myself in the future.

I choose this category because I wanted to reflect on the future.