Born This Way Foundation Supports Student Mental Health with $250,000 Donation Match for DonorsChoose Projects

NEW YORK, NY (MAY 10, 2021) This Mental Health Awareness Month, Born This Way Foundation is supporting youth mental health by partnering with DonorsChoose, a nonprofit crowdfunding platform for U.S. public school teachers. Starting today, Born This Way Foundation will match $250,000 in donations to teacher requests on DonorsChoose that directly address students’ mental health needs. The COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s reckoning with racial inequity, along with a host of other overlapping crises, have widened the educational inequity gap in schools, and expanded the need to provide more mental health resources.

In a Fall 2020 survey of parents of children aged five to 12 years, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 22% of respondents said their children’s mental or emotional health worsened since March 2020. Parents whose children were experiencing fully virtual or hybrid school environments at the time of the survey were more likely to report this decline in mental health than parents whose children were experiencing in-person learning. To help teachers support their students’ mental health, Born This Way Foundation is inviting the public to donate to teacher requests at DonorsChoose.org/bornthiswayfoundation.

“We must actively address the mental health impacts of the past year and start by empowering educators who are on the front lines caring for our young people,” said Cynthia Germanotta, president and co-founder of Born This Way Foundation. “We want to join teachers in helping to improve student well-being, encourage healthy conversations about mental health that will further reduce the stigma around the topic, and connect students to the resources they need.”