Volunteering at the Ride for Mental Health in New Jersey

The Ride for Mental Health was created after a young man passed away of an overdose related to mental health issues. His parents were devastated and decided to start doing a yearly bike race to raise money for the hospital that has been helping their child, in his honor. The founders of the ride happened to be friends with my former math teacher at school, who had helped out with the race since the very beginning. This year for the first time, he wanted to involve Hopkins students, and he reached out to the heads of the mental health awareness club and me to ask if we would like to come with him for the weekend to New Paltz, New Jersey to help out staffing the Ride for Mental Health. All of us were very excited about the opportunity and three of us ended up going. When we were there, each morning we got up at around 5 AM and we went to a meeting place where we gathered supplies to load the cars for the jobs we were going to do that day. I got to meet a lot of incredible people who had struggled with their mental health and had unbelievable stories of recovery and healing. I worked on putting up signs on bike routes, helping overheated and dehydrated bike riders, and giving car rides to those who were injured or too exhausted to carry on. It was an incredible experience and it made me feel very adult to be staffing and volunteering for the event. It was great to be there with my peers and my teacher. The work we did made a difference and that made us all happy.