Letters to Strangers: An Interview with Aotearoa Chapter, Claire Ma

Claire Ma remembers the exact moment her vision for better youth mental health in New Zealand began to take shape. Sitting at her desk, she listened intently as the founders of Letters to Strangers International shared their mission. The room was filled with hopeful energy as they shared their journey of creating a non-profit organisation promoting youth mental health. And then Claire asked, “Is there a Letters to Strangers branch in New Zealand?” The answer, “No,” felt like a challenge rather than a setback. In that conversation, Claire knew she had to bring this movement to her own country.

Since December 2021, Claire has been the heart and soul behind Letters to Strangers New Zealand, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to promoting youth mental health through the exchange of handwritten letters. Claire describes the feeling of starting a New Zealand L2S branch as a 'hot-headed moment'. 

How exactly does Letters to Strangers work? You write a letter to a stranger in your community or school through your local L2S branch. In return, you receive a letter from a stranger, an uplifting and hopeful letter to inspire you to keep going. This is called a 'letter exchange'. Claire describes this second stage as 'receiving a response from the world to you.' L2S also runs community events every month, where they gather the community and put out a couple of ideas to reflect on past experiences.

'Our team number varies throughout the year. Our core team has about 5-6 people, and each person represents their school.

In terms of structure, I get everyone to host a club in their region so they hold that leadership role in their community. My role is to support them, setting long—and short-term goals, such as how we can run L2S in their communities, mental health support, and how they look after other people.

We meet about twice a month, and each time we meet, I always include a 'closed circle time'. I throw out tricky questions, self-affirmations, and more to get thoughts flowing. I'm also giving everyone who attended a chance to speak and contribute

Juggling all the different activities and projects in her life, Claire isn't always the super-chill superwoman she seems. She talks of how it is rare to sit down to take a mental health break, so she's started to "take the time to reflect and learn" as part of her de-stress schedule. 

'I've always been quite stressed about the thought of uni: living alone, and the cost, plus studying'. 

'Once, I was writing a letter exchange, and the theme was focused on paying attributes around some flooding at the time.

One person wrote a letter saying she felt isolated and alone in uni life. She avoided feeling these negative thoughts by doing what she loved and not focusing on the bad. Hearing that shocked me how our experiences were so similar; I instantly felt less stressed about living alone. Letters to Strangers means I feel more engaged in the community, which is my motivation for the letter exchanges.'

Despite this, Claire has never felt like there was too much going on in her life, describing it as 'I enjoy having a lot on my plate; it makes me feel like my life is to its full extent.'

There have been a couple of points in Claire's journey where she felt a little overwhelmed, one of them when multiple people were organising letter exchanges from around the country. 'I was quite overwhelmed by the applications, and others started backing out. In some ways, this made me feel like I was alone trying to lift other people.'

'I overcame this by communicating with my crew and organising other people. After laying my thoughts out, I felt a lot better.'

At first, losing members made Claire doubt herself and how she ran the organisation. Thoughts like 'maybe it is because I've organised the meetings a certain way.' or 'I'm too full on' ran through her head. 'As I was thinking about this, I realised I was going through a negative cycle. So, I took a step back and looked at the bigger picture of what we were achieving, which counteracted our loss.'

Claire has learnt many things over the past year of running L2S and says that,

'The whole year-long experience has taught me more about how to lead an organisation and keep everyone happy while working hard. I now know to set a very accurate and focused agenda and send a meeting summary soon after a meeting. These are the invaluable working skills I will use for the rest of my life.'

In personal development, I've learnt a lot about other people's experiences. Loss [of team members] is a part of the journey, but no matter how many people we have on our crew, we'll always pick up more by running the letter exchange events, which is a tremendous driving force.'

What's next for L2S? 'In the future, we are looking at a couple of mental health workshops to run next year & I have also just started to fill out charity registration forms for us!'

Interested in collaborating with Claire and L2S? Here's Claire's note:

‘100 per cent reach out to us. We have heaps of resources to support you in engaging teachers, peers, and people who have experience running L2S events, and you can always ask for tips and tricks. Take action on it! It only takes a few minutes to flick an email to us.'

You can find Letters to Strangers nationally at @L2SNZ on Facebook & contact the branch at nz@letterstostrangers.org. You can also find LS2 globally at letterstostrangers.org.