Raising awareness for suicide prevention at Interact meeting
“Statistics say that for every suicide 100 people are affected. I am in the presence of those bodies now.”
These are the first words that LeAnne Hardy spoke as she talked to the students of the Interact club on Thursday afternoon.
Yesterday, Interact held what they called a “secret” meeting. Volunteers did not know what the meeting was about, but they knew it was going to be inspirational. In secret, for the last six weeks, the Interact officers, as well as Mr. Boles, Dr. Mark Jones, and LeAnne Hardy met to discuss the impact of current loses in the community. They wanted to come up with a way to spread love throughout the school during a time when it seems impossible to be okay.
The meeting started off with Hardy, Chair of the Pittsylvania County Out of the Darkness Walk, talking to the volunteers about why suicide prevention is so special and important to her.
Then, Amanda Oakes, the Danville-Pittsylvania County Services Prevention Director, got up to talk about what she does and the effects of suicide around the community.
The students worked together to create a hashtag that will be used throughout the school in the near future. After taking a few minutes to brainstorm different hashtags, the volunteers narrowed them down to one. The students drew inspirational posters and wrote the winning hashtag on them to hang around the school.
“It is helpful to people who don’t think they have a voice,” said senior Carter Wilson.
The volunteers then split up in groups with an Interact officer to hang up magnets on all lockers. The groups had hallways assigned to them to hang two kinds of magnets.
The first magnet had the suicide prevention hotline phone number and the second magnet listed a number used for texting.
The meeting ended with Interact members being given candy and a necklace. The necklace included a guitar pick that read “be the voice, stop suicide.”
Although the meeting concluded, Trojans are continuing to spread the message behind the winning hashtag, #happinesslivesths, throughout the community.
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Taylor Astin is a senior at Tunstall High School and this is her second year on the Trojan Messenger staff. After high school, she plans to major in radiology...
