Today we’d like to introduce you to Angelica Yeleshwarapu.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Angelica. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Until I was fourteen, I had lived my whole life in the Bay Area. My home spanned from San Francisco to San Jose to the suburbs in between, and moving around these places was the only constant. When I was a freshman in high school, I decided to move to Houston with my father. What pursued transformed my life.
Houston was unlike any city I had lived in before. The people were different, the culture was bold, and everything was changing fast. Today, I’m a freshman in college at a UC where I study Cognitive Science and Design, but I could not have landed here had it not been for my experiences in Houston, a city that defies the normative and does so unapologetically.
My passion for interactive arts emerged in my senior year of high school when I rediscovered my passion for art. I had spent a lot of time in the Houston Center of Photography, where I spent hours reading about great artists and self-studying their work. I came to the conclusion that my interest in art could be coupled with my love for storytelling and that I could use blend these interests into one powerful medium. I have since shot several concept shots. These shoots allowed me to see the value of a story and its power to create change. I was thus inspired to found Mission Mindfulness, a 501c3 non-profit organization whose goal is to reimagine social-emotional learning in the adolescent community through storytelling and mindfulness techniques. I designed this project after my own experiences and those of my peers. My time in Houston taught me that while the youth has incredible talent and powerful ideas, they are also struggling more than any other generation to take care of themselves. My sudden transition into life in Houston also taught me the importance of self-care during unpredictable times. I believe my experience as a first-generation immigrant teenager in a foreign place is relatable to a lot of youth, so I like to use my lessons as a way to help other kids in the same position I was once in.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Yes and no. This summer has been a great time for me to channel my time and energy into the project, but I hadn’t been practicing self-care for the first few months. I found out the hard way that no matter how much this project means to me, I still have to take care of my emotional and mental wellbeing, which is really easy to overlook if you don’t prioritize your health. When I took a step back from the project, I used the experience of overworking myself to fuel curriculum about self-care in students. I tied my own experience to that of students and student leaders who work really hard on their grades or passion projects, and no time on themselves. Wellbeing is not something that should be compromised or downplayed, so I’m glad I was able to actualize this lesson into something important.
Mission Mindfulness – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from others?
Through an app, an interactive website called “The Safe Space”, and a speaker program in schools, Mission Mindfulness has the power to support the community of youth. The best part is that the program is designed by the youth it serves to help.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Gathering the strength to start Mission Mindfulness. I feel like the hardest part of any endeavor is to begin. But once you get a flow going, everything else falls into place.
I have a long way to go before I can accomplish my bigger goals, but I’m lucky to have gotten a head start now.
Pricing:
- Speaker programs are available for free in schools
Contact Info:
- Website: missionmindfulness.org
- Email: ayeleshw@ucsd.edu
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mission.mindfulness/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mission_mindful
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