Bethel became motivated to take “action in creating an impact in my community” in response to seeing the community service efforts of other fellow students. During the summer of 2021, Bethel applied to Dosomething.org, a non-profit that supports young people engaging in volunteer, social change, and civil action campaigns.

Through this program, Bethel was matched with two other youth her age. They worked together remotely for 5 days with the challenge of developing a proposal for a project that could make an impact. Their proposal was to encourage high school students to seek help for mental health problems and to decrease stigma around this issue.

The group titled their campaign “It’s (Not) All In Your Head.” They started with the idea that students are more likely to access resources if they have easy access to information and resources. They proposed posters that would provide information about how to access mental health services.

Bethel’s team presented to the CEO and employees of Dosomething.org and their campaign was chosen over the proposals of four other youth teams. Her team’s work was developed into an on-line poster/flyer that was downloaded 4,846 times by students across the nation.

Bethel continued her interest in her community service during her senior year. She worked remotely with another student and an adult mentor through International Human Crisis Awareness Society, a youth-led nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness of social and humanitarian crises around the world. They jointly wrote a paper detailing the challenges facing prisoners with mental illness and advocating for increased mental health awareness and intervention for those incarcerated.

Her mentor for this paper, Mr. Eric Chan noted that, “Bethel demonstrated an advanced level of critical thinking and passionate commitment to social justice.”  Bethel sent her paper to her state Senator. She says, “Even though I didn't get a response, I'm proud of myself for taking action in creating an impact in my community.”