Senior Lulu Wu's project, "Boosting Mental Health Through Exercise," was selected for Global Online Academy's (GOA) Catalyst Exhibition Showcase. Hers was just one of 20 selected out of more than 270 submissions.
GOA Membership Director Kelsey Hall congratulated Wu in an email: "Your presentation opened with an engaging beautiful question, and your response was carefully researched, detailed, and compelling. Your project has great potential for making an impact - thank you for your work to catalyze positive change on such important issues. We hope that sharing your project on this public stage is just the beginning."
Wu's submission addressed the question, "Why is it important to take care of our mental health and how does exercise increase well-being in order to move towards a more positive life?" A top-level tennis player, Wu said that she'd chosen this topic because she was interested in the relationship between physical activity and stress.
Through interviews with the GFA school counselors, she gained insight into mental health issues, and ways in which they are treated. She then created mood boards, color palettes, motivational posters, and a journal to be used by her research subjects to document their mood in relation to exercise.
"I wanted to make this journal personal because our minds are personal," she said. "I wanted to make it a beautiful cluster because our minds can be clustered with thoughts, so the user is letting out those thoughts onto paper almost like they are 'contaminating' the journal, and that’s a beautiful thing."
The goal of Wu's project is to help those who are suffering from a mental disorder or who are in recovery. Her hope is that by hanging her posters around her neighborhood she would inspire them to exercise. Through the journals, she hoped that they could document thoughts, create a plan, and find resources to stay focused and set goals for self-care.
"In the end, I wanted to create a warm and welcoming environment to help those struggling with their mental health by being a resource as a support system and a way to work towards a more positive mindset," she said.
The GOA Catalyst Exhibition, now in its seventh year, gives students "the opportunity to demonstrate how they have applied the skills and concepts learned in their course to the real world." The presentations are put together by students who are enrolled in one (or more) GOA course. To learn more about Wu's project, click here.
About GOA and Catalyst Exhibition:
Global Online Academy’s Student Program creates global learning opportunities for high school students that give voice to local advocacy projects and promote student engagement through project-based learning. GOA believes that when students pursue a topic of their own choosing they encounter unique obstacles and challenges that they can learn from and celebrate. By designing experiences like the Catalyst Exhibition, we hope to encourage students to share their learning with a public audience to amplify and authenticate their voices and ideas. We know from experience that exhibitions of learning that include a public audience stretch students to create high-quality capstone projects.