About Us
HOME . ABOUT US
About Us
ABOUT US
Our mission is to nurture mental health journeys for young adults in a safe community while using photography as the 3rd element in therapy.
We connect adolescents ages 10-19 with pediatric therapists for in-person, virtual, and interactive community sessions.
About Us
In our community, certified therapists lead authentic and confidential circles of children who are bonded by sheer expressions of inner courses on their roads out of mental health issues. We are channeling conversations and interactions to identify and address negative emotions captured in children’s shots and stories.
Members contribute their stories and therapeutic photography submissions. But photography skills or a lack of it is not a requirement. Rather we embrace the confidence to express oneself out of subnormal emotions with openness, creative expression, and professional support by therapists.
We admit members freely and encourage them to speak up with stories, shots, and lenses into self-discovery and healing.
Our objective is to help young adults combat depression, stigma, racial discrimination, sexual orientation dilemma, bully trauma, low self-esteem, fear, and other mental health disorders with therapeutic photography.
How we work
At The 3rd Element, young adults are welcomed into an authentic community with access to our digital platform and physical sessions to interact and shine their lights. Members get to book free sessions with licensed therapists to combat mental health struggles.
We open our platform for children of all experiences to find a safe haven to express their emotions through stories and photographs. Members also interact physically at the 3rd Element Circles hosted by certified therapists at the 3rd Element Center.
Members of the 3rd Element community use their phones, professional cameras, laptop cameras or other gadgets to capture images that reflect their mental health status or other personal themes. They submit their photographs by identity or anonymously with a descriptive story. These entries are hosted freely on the platform, while physical connections are used to give members access to impactful conversations with therapists.
Our community activities help members to learn skills, improve mental health, and get empowerment for life. We help members hold close sessions with peers and private sessions with counselors. Members are also guided as they use photography as a tool for self-expression, introspection, and building a better outcome in self-discovery and confidence.
We partner with schools, religious institutions, hospitals and pediatric therapists to organize programs for children ages 10-19 to find their true selves out of subnormal emotions and societal
limitations.
The 3rd Element empowers community members by organizing exhibitions and contests where young adults put their photographs up for sale to raise funding and use the proceeds to further their education and individual goals.
Therapeutic photography
Therapeutic Photography is the practice of taking photos of or by oneself with the goal to improve well-being, produce positive change, discover inner self, reduce communal exclusion, and inspire self-confidence.
Our choice of this method as the third element in therapy is because photo-based activities in clinical practice are based on scientific evidence, professional clinical expertise, and the unique characteristics of the modern-day child.
This practice is largely self-initiated without the practical involvement of mental health professionals. When therapeutic photography is adopted as photo-based activities within an organized group with the aim of resolving mental health problems for members, therapists are involved to initiate the practice of phototherapy techniques – a branch of therapy practices.
You can learn more on your own about therapeutic photography and related practices at The Phototherapy Center [insert link: https://phototherapy-centre.com/about-judy-weiser/].
There is a slight difference between therapeutic photography – when an individual takes photos to achieve self-healing, and phototherapy – when therapists use photo-based methods for diagnosing and curing mental health issues for patients.
In therapeutic photography, individuals or groups could adopt the camera as an agent of social change and creative healing. This process often emphasizes the photography or the photo-based activities of the people involved. A higher level of deriving benefits in such activities comes when emphasis is put on the process of therapy under the guidance of a trained mental health professional.
Therapeutic photography was used after the Second World War to help servicemen recover from battlefield traumatic disorder and transition them back into society.
With up to 80% of U.S. children lacking access to professional help when they suffer mental health disorders, the 3rd Element sees a huge gap in general access to pediatric therapy and the adoption of therapeutic photography for combating adolescent mental health challenges.
The 3rd Element provides members the opportunity to hold guided conversations with licensed therapists to provide wellness and to unravel the curative elements of self-reflective photos and stories.
Our Values
Professional help for children:
We believe in helping adolescents access professional help in their mental health journeys. No child should be left alone in the modern world as they transition into adults.
We uniquely deploy pediatric therapy using modern techniques and community interactions to help channel adolescents’ skills and communication devices into combating mental health.
The power of sharing and community:
We promote a safe and authentic community for kids to have a voice away from fear. We maintain open conversations among members with the close attention of certified therapists. Our community members are intentional, creative, thought-provoking, honest, supportive, interactive, and genuinely human.
Our 3rd Element Circle, therapist sessions, events, and exhibitions promote the opportunity for members to share their stories and therapeutic photography.
Impact over profit
The 3rd Element is a nonprofit that galvanizes mental health collectives and care for young adults. We execute our programs freely so that millions of adolescents can find professional therapy support, confidence, curative interactions, happiness, and community resources to express their innermost emotions.
We deploy our founder’s gift of therapeutic photography skills and seek resources from donors and partners to keep our community and platform ongoing. We cherish the social impact sustained in the lives of our members, because when they find meaning, we feel like healers.
Creative Expression:
We believe in photography and storytelling as tools for communicating inner peace or anguish. We also believe in the use of photo-based methods for diagnosing and curing mental health issues. We teach therapeutic photography skills and hold regular sessions to help community members write their mental health journeys in impactful pieces.
Self Care
We believe in wellness and achieving holistic self-care for a more fulfilled life. In addition, our tool of therapeutic photography stems from our belief in using methods that are close to fun in the modern world of technology and distraction, for finding new answers to mental health issues.
We empower young adults in a communal fashion to turn their energy from addictive screen times and the negative effects of online technology into finding answers to their inner questions, and expressing their thoughts with photographs.
At the 3rd Element, the process of adolescents establishing behaviors for self-care is guided by trained therapists.
Our Impact
We partner with schools, religious institutions, hospitals, pediatric therapists, donors and other stakeholders to organize programs for children ages 10-19 to combat their mental health struggles.
Our Team
Ways to give
Your support helps promote mental health for young adults.
Donate cash, a phone, a tablet, a camera, a laptop, or in kind to the 3rd Element mission to support a child grow into a mentally sound adult.
These are what your support helps us achieve:
Trained Counselors
We believe in providing professional help to children, which is why we work exclusively with licensed therapists to guide our community members on their mental health journeys. We offer small tokens to our therapists as a gesture of appreciation for their time and dedication to the healing of our community.
Community leadership
We maintain a small staff strength to support our mission, host events, community circles, mental health intervention, and other programs.
We started self-funded by our founder Roland Omoresemi to provide free platforms, free therapy sessions, free trainings, free events and excellent support to help children access mental health solutions.
Today, we need to build a viable platform to onboard more members and accommodate their stories and therapeutic photography.
We will always provide free access to our community to help adolescents find their voices out of mental health challenges.
Resources and trainings
We provide free laptops, phones, and other gadgets for members of our communities to use. We also conduct research and development, hold training sessions with paid facilitators and entertainment.
Platform and center
To maintain our online platform and physical center.
Contact
Please use the contact information below to send us a message.
Due to a large number of emails and requests that we receive regularly, we may only be able to respond as soon as possible.
Kindly reach us here:
E-mail: [email protected]
phone: +1(913) 961-2234