My volunteer community service started my freshman year when 4 boys from my high school committed suicide. I knew high school students had pressures like drinking, drugs, parties, etc, but I never thought I would personally experience suicide. It is really difficult to understand why it happened, but it did and since teen suicide has become an epidemic, I felt like I wanted to do something to help. I decided to do a fundraiser for 2NDFLOOR YOUTH HELPLINE®, which is an anonymous helpline for teens. I ended up raising $30,000 for the boys' scholarships, as well as the helpline.

I remembered a hotline my mom used to volunteer for called the 2ND FLOOR® Youth Helpline. 2NDFLOOR® is not a suicide hotline or a hotline for one specific problem. Teens can call about bullying, problems at home, relationships, school or anything else. If the hotline worker thinks that a caller is in danger of hurting himself or another person they will contact the police. I created the HOLDON! Benefit to raise money and awareness for 2NDFLOOR YOUTH HELPLINE®. It was an honor to work with the employees of 2NDFLOOR®, as well as two of the boys mothers. I gained leadership experience and truly feel blessed.

In order to reach my goal for the benefit, a lot of help was required. Being the creator of the benefit, my plate was full. I found that since I was responsible for getting the venue, food and entertainment donated, I realized was networking a lot. I had to write a donation letter, obtain a Tax-ID number and solicit businesses to see if any donations could be given. Another aspect of the benefit that took a great amount of effort, was selling tickets. It took a lot of work to promote the benefit, and make it well known around town, so that people bought tickets. The steps I had to take to reach my goals began with first off believing in myself that I actually could do it. Then, I had to recruit two of the boys mothers to help me plan it. Thirdly, as I previously mentioned, we had to find a venue, music, food, donations for the auction and so forth, and get companies to underwrite for our costs, so 100% of the proceeds went to charity. From there, we had to sell tickets to all of out family, friends, the community and students in the high school. After selling, we purchased all of the miscellaneous items we needed (t-shirts, stickers, bags, baskets etc.) Before I knew it, it was October 12, 2008, the day of the benefit. Again, I think the hardest part of the benefit would have to have been selling tickets. If it weren’t for the boys’ mothers, I don’t think that we would’ve been as successful as we were in selling tickets. A second major role that played into the tickets sales was our advertising. We hung flyers around the 6 sending districts, advertised weekley in our local newspaper, and we were blessed to be able to share our story with a popular radio station called Z100. I think since the community was aware, we sold a lot of tickets.

go to www.holdonbenefit.com, or email about@holdonbenefit.com