As the nation's first public university, Carolina is dedicated to "foster the success and prosperity of each rising generation." With our programming and network, we hope to "extend knowledge-based services and other university resources to enhance the quality of life for all people," especially international students and the East Asian community.
1. International students live in different time zones, making it hard for them to participate
As most student organization events occur at 6 or 7 p.m., which is 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. in CST, international students in East Asia usually cannot fully and actively participate and contribute to the events. They need to sleep in the morning since they have to stay up for classes at midnight. We hope to design our program to work around the time zone, specifically for students living in East Asia. For instance, we seek to organize events in the afternoon in CST and other time zones in East Asia, which is around 3 a.m. in Chapel Hill – a time difficult for other student organizations to held events. After the pandemic, we are committed to continuing running our program to provide support for international students.
2. International Students are not fully introduced to mental resources on campus
Despite Healthy Heels and the Counseling and Psychological Services on campus has done an excellent job providing support for Carolina students, international students are usually not aware of those resources or are not using them effectively. Programs such as Group Therapy usually require screening and have limited seats available. Thus, we plan to connect international students to resources on campus as we seek to direct them to professional help.
3. International students find it hard to access similar activities.
Similar organizations focusing on mental health are not actively holding events under the pandemic. Even if they do, international students could not easily attend them because of the time difference.
4. International perspectives are not understood by traditional services.
East Asian Community at UNC has a very different cultural background from local students. While one needs to be in a comfortable setting to talk about psychological well-being, language, and culture barriers could put extra stress on the student. However, there is currently no organization that provides explicitly mental health support for the East Asian Community at UNC, which is a large part of our members.