On October 31, multiple Henry Clay students were invited to a national organization called Sources of Strength. The group promotes positive mental health and suicide prevention for younger people.
Students were recommended by their teachers, who picked them out as student leaders to go to Sources of Strength. All of these students met in the library and played games, ate lunch, and had conversations about their life experiences.
Presenter Blake Konny announced to his attendees that the job of student leaders was to make all students feel empowered.
Each student was given a peer leader guide, who gave their group a paper that had a wheel of eight different mental health and physical health areas of focus.
As students participated in an exercise about thankfulness and mental wellbeing, a student named Jordan Jumbo said that he was thankful for his mother.
Blake said that empowering student leaders meant focusing on the fact that “Emotions are not negative or positive. Instead, they are human, and learning to deal with them is [the most] important thing.”
