Native Youth Mental Health Initiative

Community driven social marketing workshop & branding

design

As a component of a social marketing breakout at a mental health convening of California Native health programs, I co-facilitated a social marketing breakout workshop to teach the fundamentals of social marketing project planning and design. This product of this collaborative workshop—a zine—was then leveraged in to a wider branded community advocacy initiative in several parts.

The goal

In order to demonstrate social marketing principles in practice for the wider conference, our breakout group needed to select project to create in order to share back during the main session. The goal was to educate and empower participants and attendees with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to design and implement social marketing solutions responsive to their communities.

The Workshop

After facilitating an introductory session on social marketing principles, our group settled on a zine as the model project due to its inherently accessible format, the content flexibility it provides, and the ease of collaboration it offers. After establishing our goals for the creative phase, we defined three groups to work in separate areas: messaging, content, and design.

Development

Youth and program staff alike were involved in the creation of content ranging from hand drawn artwork, a rap that was later performed by one of the participating youth, bead work, and photography. After two hours we had what we needed to assemble the zine in InDesign and create our final product.

During the assembly process, I was able to provide instruction to program staff with access to design software in their roles and walk them through the usage of the tools at their disposal, explaining tools, techniques, and principles, while answering questions.

After our group reached a consensus on the final design, eighty zines were printed locally and then distributed the following morning to all conference attendees as a part of a presentation on the many possibilities that lay in the collaborative, community-driven social marketing and design process.

The Product

Carefree Joy; Comfort in Identity; Destigmatizing Asking for Help; and Self-Care

The ‘Living in 2 Worlds’ zine was designed to convey youth perspectives on mental health, Native identity, and self care. The mixed-media approach to content aided in conveying the diverse texture of experiences that make up Urban Native youth identity.

Expanding the vision

As an additional demonstration of how the ideas, messaging, and content that produced the initial zine could be expanded upon to serve the community in another way, I conceptualized a mental health toolkit and promotional apparel branded with color, type, and the language developed for the zine as a way to help communities further envision the how social marketing could take shape in practice.

Native Youth Voices Campaign

To support awareness of this community initiative, I then leveraged the product concepts and themes of the zine into a wider social media campaign that would support wider efforts for mental health advocacy for Native youth, directly positioning them not only as the impacted population, but also as the experts whose insights are essential to making systemic improvements. The campaign serves as an advocacy tool to educate local community stakeholders to the prevailing needs of the Native population and to uplift and highlight local youth leadership efforts.

infographic

As a final piece of this initiative, an infographic specifically highlighting opioid use disorder (OUD) and mental health barriers, as an easily distributable tool for educating local stakeholders to the issue of opioid addiction in the community.

Native Youth Mental Health Initiative

Circles of Care

PetBit

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