Name: Giselle Molaei

Social Justice Group: 2021-2022, Children, Mental Health, and the Pandemic

Date of Fieldwork: March 3, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Libi Livnat, student

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :

On Thursday, March 3rd our group interviewed Libi Livant. Libi is an LREI student in 8th grade who my partner and I are good friends with. We asked if she was alright with us interviewing her on her input about our social justice issue, and she happily agreed. In our last interview was with Ty Beauchamp he suggested that we speak with our peers about this issue because they have the most to say about it and he was correct.

A lot of the things that Libi told us we agreed with and related to. She said that Covid had hit her and all of her friends hard and that the pandemic changed her life forever. Libi was actually diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder. Seasonal affective dicorder is a disorder where you have uncontrollable mood swings based on the changing of seasons. This took a huge toll on Libi plus the fact that the pandemic prohibited her from doing the things that make her happy, like seeing friends. Libi has found things like music that keeps her cheerful. She suggests that we normalize people’s mental health so that people will be more comfortable opening up about their feelings.

My group member and I truly connected with Libi and it was great to hear another voice similar to others talking about moving forward with this world wide problem. Interviewing Libi was a great opportunity to get more incite on our issue plus getting to know her better as a friend.