Youth are experts
Young people hold essential knowledge about their own experiences.
About Project Qualia
Understanding is the foundation of meaningful change.
We are a youth mental health research, storytelling, and dialogue institute built to close the gap between lived experience and public understanding.
Our vision
A world where young people are not merely spoken about, but genuinely understood.
We envision schools, families, communities, researchers, and policymakers making decisions informed not only by data, but by the realities of the people those decisions affect.
Our mission
To understand and improve youth mental wellbeing through many ways of knowing.
We bring together research led with young people, storytelling, creative expression, film, dialogue, and policy engagement. By documenting experience and creating spaces for conversation across generations and sectors, we help understanding travel into action.
Why Qualia?
A name for the inner life.
The word qualia refers to the subjective experience of being human—the feeling of what it is like to experience the world from one's own perspective.
It reminds us that every data point contains a life being lived from the inside. Our work begins by taking that inner perspective seriously.
Our guiding question
What would change if young people felt genuinely understood?
This question guides what we study, whose voices we center, how we share what we learn, and what action we ask institutions to take.
What makes us different
Context matters
Data becomes more useful when we understand the lives behind it.
Expression is insight
Art, story, and emotion belong alongside conventional evidence.
Listening is action
Deep attention can reshape relationships, institutions, and policy.
See how we work