From an early age, Idania Rodriguez understood the importance of being confident, speaking up and advocating for herself and others.
Rodriguez watched and learned from her parents as they struggled to build a new life for their three children. Moving from Puerto Rico to Tampa, Florida was not an easy transition. At times, her family struggled to make ends meet, but their strength and perseverance never wavered.
From their examples, Rodriguez learned how to harness her own voice and use it to help those around her.
Rodriguez, a freshman at Carolina University, founded the nonprofit Mental H2O when she was 16. Inspired by the mental health struggles of her classmates, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rodriguez wanted to create an information hub designed by young people, for young people.
“During my time at school, I noticed that mental health wasn’t talked about enough,” Rodriguez said, “and some students were suffering in silence or afraid to speak up about their feelings because they were afraid of how adults would perceive the information.”
“I struggled with my own mental health issues and found it really hard to get support at school. That’s when I started to realise there was a gap that needed to be filled. I knew if no adults were going to step up then I had to.”
Determined to make a change, Rodriguez began perusing online resources about mental health, and in the process, connected with Garrett Livingston, a mental health advocate and current student at Kenan-Flagler Business School.
Rodriguez and Livingston worked together to register Mental H2O as a 501(c)(3) organization and go through the process of creating a website, with Rodriguez serving as president and Livingston as CEO.
The Mental H2O website started small. In the beginning, Rodriguez would get home from school around 4 p.m. and work late into the night, writing most of the articles for the site. Eventually, Rodriguez enlisted about 50 of her classmates to help, and then she began working with her local school board in Hillsborough County. Today, the site has more than 100 volunteers around the world, with more than 1,000 hours of volunteer work recognized.
The Mental H2O website is full of mental health resources, tips, and tools curated by students.
“All of the resources on this site are created by students for students and we’re very careful about what we put on the site,” Rodriguez said. “We know it can be really hard to get help, so being culturally sensitive and meeting the needs of students has been really important to us from the beginning.”
And this work is just the beginning: Encouraged by the feedback she’s received and the impact Mental H2O has had on her Tampa community, Rodriguez plans to hone her skills in the Carolinas and further position herself as a leader in the mental health field.
Rodriguez is applying to the Gillings School of Global Public Health and plans to major in health policy and management. She said she chose Carolina in part because of the school’s focus on student health.
“I didn’t want to go to a university that didn’t prioritize the needs of students or prioritize the health of students,” Rodriguez said.
“UNC definitely does that, so I feel like I can reach a larger audience and use what UNC has to offer to further my mission of supporting student mental health.”
