Brain2Heart is a club that educates students on the importance of first aid and health awareness, taking place in sponsor Allison Vautier’s classroom every other Wednesday. Freshmen Sunny Han, Sonja Konicki and Nikita Sinha are its student leaders, using this opportunity to help people gain more knowledge on essential health information.

Freshman and club member Tiffany Duong said Brain2Heart’s main objective is to teach low-income students about medical careers and topics.

“The organization’s main goal is to reach students that have a passion for being in the medical field but don’t have the resources to guide them through it,” Duong said. “Our job is to make sure those students are successful [in learning through the mentorship program] and to make sure they have a good start in their [potential medical] career [with the information they need].”

As she builds her own love of medicine, Vice President Sunny Han said she wanted to be a student leader of Brain2Heart to inspire others.

“I was inspired to create the Brevard branch [of Brain2Heart] by my own aspirations of wanting to connect students to opportunities [to learn more about health awareness],” Han said. “In addition to that, I love science and medicine. I find it so interesting to see how our bodies work and how medicine is a way to get people healthier to live their lives to the fullest.”

However, Duong said that it has been challenging to gain participation for Brain2Heart, although she feels hopeful for its future success in Brevard.

“The only problem [with Brain2Heart] is reaching out to students that were interested [in joining],” Duong said. “Students around West Shore are mostly high income and they’re not interested, but a problem was reaching to other schools with low income [to increase the organization’s outreach].”

On Jan. 5, Brain2Heart initiated its mentorship program, which involves high school students teaching middle school students about health and science.

“A bunch of people are going into [the Melbourne Public Library], and we have student mentors helping student mentees to teach them about the basics of the medical field,” Duong said. “In our second semester, we’ll focus on fun activities to engage the students into what they learned from the mentors, such as sports activities to show how important exercise is for physical health.”

The club is also working to gain more members and host fundraisers to contribute to their cause, anticipating events like a bake sale in February.

“As vice president of the nonprofit organization, I have been working with the executive board [of Brain2Heart] to organize a national virtual jeopardy fundraiser for middle and high school students,” Han said. “We are also working toward organizing more events between our chapters, although we aren’t too sure how that will look yet. We are expecting to implement some sort of summer program for incoming mentees and mentors, along with a few more fundraisers.”

Freshman and club member Lauralai Gant said her favorite aspect of Brain2Heart is “seeing the passion of other members” for improving their community and health awareness.

“All of the members of the club care deeply and want to see this club thrive,” Gant said. “This really motivates me to stay involved and continue doing great things with this organization.”

By Lily Vu