The University of Toronto Mental Health Student Association (UofTMHA) was established in 2016 and works to link students with mental health resources.
We are a student-run club that aims to break the stigma surrounding mental health and empower students through their mental health journeys while also practicing diversity, equity & inclusion. We strive to educate and promote healthy coping mechanisms among students struggling with their mental health and aim to make mental health resources a lot more accessible to students. We aim to do this by hosting events, seminars, workshops, fundraisers, and other initiatives throughout the year to raise awareness and educate UofT students as well as members of the community on various mental health themes. In our approach, we aim to increase representations of various mental health topics and amplify voices of underrepresented groups within the university space online and in-person, while constantly obtaining ongoing feedback from club members and the UofT community to better cater our initiatives towards their needs.
We try to look at mental health from a different perspective, showcasing more than just the clinical aspect by including a focus on maintaining a healthy mind, healthy body, lifestyle, and providing resources to do so.
The UofTMHA would like to thank our gracious sponsors for supporting our club in carrying out its main mission goal to help break the stigma surrounding mental health in the community. If you're interested in supporting our cause or making a donation, please reach out to us at uoftmhasponsorship@gmail.com or to our main email uoftmha@gmail.com ! All contributions and supports are welcome and appreciated!
These soft and heavy 300 gsm cotton and polyester mix Hoodies and T-shirts are a light cream and white colour, with our club logo embroidered on the front and our design at the back being a direct to garment print!
The design is primarily drawn with brown tones and some accent pinks to give you a warm and trendy yet classy and sophisticated look! Our quote on the back is “You feel what you feel and it's okay”, which are written in a milk chocolate retro font while having a light brown bear in the middle holding a semicolon symbol.
Symbolic Meaning of Design: The bear was chosen as it is an animal that represents strength, confidence, self-healing, grounding, appreciating sweetness of life, peace, and determination to overcome any hurdle thrown your way. The heart a the top of its head is to remind you to love yourself and there is always love around you. The semicolon the bear is holding is a symbol of mental health, specifically to represent and share personal strength to overcome internal struggle. This means anyone can raise awareness of suicide prevention, depression, substance use, help stop mental health stigma and inspire strength in the midst of suffering.
As the UofT Mental Health Student Association is a Non-for Profit Organization, all proceeds from our initiatives are donated or go towards fundraising initiatives. The fundraiser we are focusing on is our "FemiCare" Women's Shelters Fundraising Initiative, where our goal is to create care packages to send to two women's shelters in Toronto: Ernestine's and Anduhyaun Inc. Help us reach our goal of $500 by buying this year's Merch 2.0 launch!
To purchase any of these and/or support our cause, please email uoftmha@gmail.com to inquire further details to buy our merch, or directly donate to our GoFundMe we set-up for our FemiCare initiative linked here - GoFundMe Link
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