Riverside’s Maeve White loves helping people.
It’s more than words – it’s her actions, too.
Whether it’s spending time with kids without stable homes or advocating for mental health care, White is there. She’s even keen to assist her sister.
“Maeve loves helping people,” her sister, Ciara, said. “She helps me study for all my schoolwork and helps me with my homework and helps me pick out clothes – we have very different styles.”
So, it’s no surprise to those who know her that the Fenwick graduate is now lobbying for the implementation of a proposed bill that was introduced to the House in 2023: The Mental Health in International Development and Humanitarian Settings Act, or the MINDS Act. It would require American humanitarian assistance efforts and programs to integrate “mental health and psychosocial support” measures into their overseas operations for people living in poverty.
She does this as part of her internship with The Borgen Project, founded by Clint Borgen over 20 years ago. It aims to make global poverty relief a greater priority in foreign policy and legislation worldwide. The nonprofit has been heralded as “incredible” by The Huffington Post.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, elevated collective stress levels and school closures have allowed for greater vulnerability worldwide to food insecurity, abuse and neglect, and symptoms of loneliness and depression.
“Factors that increase susceptibility to mental health and substance abuse disorders include poverty, hunger, chronic and untreated health conditions, trauma and maltreatment, social exclusion and discrimination, and exposure to and displacement by war or conflict,” authors of The Borgen Project’s summary of the MINDS Act wrote.
“Further, depression and anxiety disorders alone cost the global economy $1 trillion per year in lost productivity. Investments in mental health programs, including those focused on the wellbeing of children, can help break the cycle of poverty abroad. Childhood poverty causes lower school achievement; worse cognitive and related acuteness; and higher rates of delinquency, anxiety and depression, leading to higher rates of psychiatric disorders later in adulthood.”
White’s lobbying work consists of calling and emailing legislators like Tammy Duckworth, Chuy Garcia, and Dick Durbin on a weekly basis. She encourages them to support developments like the MINDS Act and make themselves aware of the Borgen Project’s work — which, she said, “does a lot more than you think.”
“I didn’t really know I would be doing this exact sort of thing when I started working. I knew it was a nonprofit; I knew I’d be doing something with marketing and PR for this nonprofit, and it was way more hands-on than I expected.”
But White’s advocacy started long before the internship.
For example, in her preteen years, she said, a school she attended hosted refugee children for a recreational day. She remembers that while she didn’t understand “the gravity of the situation,” she loved connecting with and comforting the kids, understanding they had come from “a tough situation.”
And as part of her culture and health class at Marquette University, White volunteered at a Milwaukee homeless shelter.
“At their childcare center … I’d babysit [the kids], basically, after school,” she said. “We’d give them after-school snacks and play with them and help them do homework. I really got to know them: these were homeless kids, and that just really broke my heart.
“Since then, I’ve been even more inclined to help people and take opportunities like the Borgen Project — where I know I could be someone helping someone.”
White found the Borgen Project while seeking a summer communications internship during a semester in Rome.
“[Rome was] just epic: the food, the culture, Europe… I went all over; I didn’t just stay in Rome, so it was definitely the best thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “I’m really grateful that I was able to have that opportunity.”
Rome, which White called “beautiful,” was her first time outside the United States. While abroad, she called her search for work “extremely competitive.”
“I was racing to find a communications internship.” As a journalism major, she cited wanting to give herself the advantage of prior work experience in a post-graduate career search. “And that’s how I found the Borgen Project.”
White now does her advocacy work between hours interning for Illinois mesothelioma attorneys Cooney & Conway.
Her cousin, Jacqueline Hart, noted that White’s energetic nature helps her balance time between her close family and work, saying “Maeve’s, like, really personable and she can kind of just talk to anyone… She’s just very outgoing.”
White insists the case for the MINDS Act reaches beyond the political.
“I think we all have the duty to be good people, and think about people who are in these awful scenarios and have less than us; I think as good people we should… have open minds to someone else’s experience,” she said. “[Mental welfare is] a globalized thing…you’re doing something to help someone stay alive…[that] is extremely profound.”
At the end of the day, in White’s eyes, “It’s saving lives. It’s about life.”