See It: The Community being helped

Teen suicide is a rising epidemic in this world and the silence of it is killing people at a more rapid pace. My service is to provide information to my peers and adults about suicide that will place awareness in the community, in hopes to reduce the number of suicides in this world and to encourage those who may be facing the the pains and feeling of depression and suicide, to speak up about it, speak out to their families, teachers, and friends about, and to speak loud about the matter for others to receive the awareness as well.

See It: The Community being helped

There is a great need for suicide awareness and prevention in any high school. But through talking to students and teachers we have discovered that suicide is a very prominent problem, but no one has taken the initiative to talk about it. Suicide accounts for 1.2% of the deaths in the United States annually. Through raising awareness we hope to educate the student body about how to catch the signs, provide an open ear, and take action to help a person in need. Catching the signs is the first step to the solution. 75% of suicides had given notice or warning to a friend or a family member. With a 10.4% suicide rate in the 15-24 year old category and an 18.7% suicide death rate in New Mexico, just knowing the signs would do a world of good. A person in need may not want to talk right away but an informed friend or family member would know to be persistent, and through persistence the distraught person would be willing to get help. Hopefully with a suicide prevention program a teacher, a parent, and even a student may just be that help. Students could be the definite key in ending the teen suicide problem.

The project we have in mind to address the problem at hand is a suicide prevention/awareness month at our high school. I think this will give us the opportunity to make it aware to the teens of our community about the rising epidemic of teen suicides not only in our area but in the entire united states. We propose a charity month of a concert and a dance in order to get a speaker from the Second Wind Fund who will further raise awareness in our school. A suicide awareness and prevention assembly would kick off the month. The assembly would tell the student staff and body about what is to come, the goals in mind, and what they can do to help these goals come to being. A dance would be that following weekend to get people in the right state of mind to conquer suicide in our community. A suicide awareness /prevention concert would take place in the middle of the month. The concert will help in the raising of money for the Second Wind Fund. The Second Wind Fund is trying to demolish the barriers between a teen in need and the help that teen requires, whether the help is in a social manner or a financial one. Anyway the concert would be an empowering concert held to show that teenagers can make a difference in any community. Thus creating a powerful atmosphere to aid in the student body’s willingness to accept and listen to the speaker to come.

See It: The Community being helped

In the Spring of 2005, two students at Person High School in North Carolina committed suicide. Everyone around the community wanted to do something about it, but no one was sure exactly how to do it. Many of the students of the school wanted to create plaques, draw, and have a full memorial for the two students. This is when I stepped up to the challenge and said, "Why don't we create something long term, to prevent this from ever happening again?"
I looked up valuable information from the American Foundation for Suicide prevention, as well as local records. In this rural county, there has been at least one suicide per year since the 1970's, usually silenced by the townspeople to retain the Stepford image of the area. So I had a series of ideas.
1) "Out of the Darkness" March - a silent, candlelit march through Main Street of the area.
2) "Into the Light" Rally - a celebration of life and friendship, with local bands, artists, poets, and speakers, on how suicide or this program has affected them and the community.
3) Peer Training - Teens help other teens in noting the signs of depression and suicide, and working with their peers to prevent it.
4) Teacher Training - Concerned parents and teachers are trained to note signs of depression and unhealthy behaviors, and how to help.
5) A financial planning guide - life insurance does not cover a suicide, and families of the victims are already suffering. Why should they financially suffer too? It is a guide of the options to take in such a situation.
6) Offer a Person County Link to the suicide help line (1-800-273-TALK)

Our first year we saved up $1500, and $1000 of it went to the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention, thereby granting us the link to the suicide help line, as well as the funds for the rally. Money is still being put into the training of the teachers, students, and peers. Since the program started 2 1/2 years ago, we have helped over a hundred troubled teens and there has not been an incidence of suicide between ages 14 - 21, our focused age range.

See It: The Community being helped

Five students, one goal: to decrease the incidence of teen suicide in Colorado, and ultimately everywhere.

For a social enterprise project in my seminar class, "Leading With Differences in Mind," several classmates and I generated a project to raise the double-bottom-line revolving around suicide. Our goal was to not only raise money for the Second Wind Fund, a non-profit organization started 6 years ago after several teen suicides at a local high school, but to also raise awareness about this sensitive topic and attempt to decrease the stigma associated with suicide. Our group was one of several groups to work on this project. Our idea was to create a fund-raiser that involved several businesses in the immediate vicinity of our school. We created "discount cards" that allowed for particular deals at six of these businesses in our area for a year. The cost of the card was $10 apiece, and that generated about $8 profit per card. All of those who purchased the cards learned about the frightening statistics related to suicide and also discovered how they could help save lives. The majority of the money went to the organization to directly support the counseling services for students who were at risk of suicide in the middle schools and high schools in numerous counties in the Denver-Metro area.