"In Creativity Camp we talk about what makes you weird and how we will work very hard to protect it," says Yuko Taniguchi, an award-winning writer, poet, and assistant professor for medicine and the arts at the University of Minnesota Rochester.
"Weird isn't derogatoryit's about finding out what makes you special."
That's the premise of Creativity Camp, a summer camp for teens dealing with mental health challenges that Taniguchi runs with Kathryn Cullen, professor and division director of Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
The camp's goal is to help teens become more flexible thinkers, per a press release.
Teens are asked to work with clay, write poetry, and put together an art exhibit at the camp, which is based out of the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain.
"It's not therapy, she says, but, because severe depression can lead to rigid thinking, it's about immersing the teens in a creative experience that helps them become more flexible thinkers," says Taniguchi, who grew up in Japan and moved to the US when she was 15.
As a Bush Fellow, she learned more about what it means to work on the inner self, how to focus on the
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Senay Ataselim-Yilmaz, Chief Operating Officer, Turkish Philanthropy Funds, writes that philanthropy often solves the very problems that stems from market failure. Some social issues, however, Â cannot be tackled by questioning the return on investment.