Leadership students take a stance against suicide by selling headphones to promote suicide awareness.
TJ’s Leadership class promotes A Fire Within to help prevent suicide. Photo by Henna Danek.
This past February 11, our very own Spartans competed with several other schools in the Fire Within, a program designed to raise suicide awareness. “The Fire Within is a non profit organization set up by the Sally Spencer Thomas Foundation,” said Matt Santambrogio, a teacher here at TJ. “Its purpose is to support and promote suicide awareness and prevention.”
The Leadership class randomly chose students to participate as a group in the Fire Within program. “The program is generally run through Business Management and DECA classes because there’s a large business component, but Mr. Nicolo didn’t have time for it and Samanda Davis (TJ Social Worker) recommended it for the Leadership class, so the Leadership class took it on,” said Santambrogio.
Layth Dieyleh, Denvonna Lyons, Kessanet Negash, and Abhishek Kumar Rauniyar were assigned to construct a video to illustrate the importance of suicide awareness (full link below). “At first I didn’t really want to be a part of it, but what made me want to join is that one of my classes was really informational on what to do when one of your friends has suicidal thoughts. I joined, and it led to me finding out a lot of useful suicide information,” said Dieyleh.
With their achievement in placing 3rd in the competition, the Leadership members are striving to commence headphone sales here at TJ as soon as possible. “The students came up with the idea of selling earphones to bring the attention to the listening aspect, and that if you have someone who is listening to you and is there to support you you’ve got a friend and you’ve got a connection, so you’re much less likely to feel alone, feel isolated, and make those irrational decisions that lead to suicide,” said Santambrogio.
The money raised from the headphone sales will go towards suicide awareness. “We are going to start selling the headphones in Mr. Santambrogio’s room; we’re also trying to work something out with DECA, so we can sell them in the DECA boxes. We are also going to go down to Safeway and King Supers and see if they would be willing to sell our product there. Then, after about a year or so, we’re going to team up with another school and start selling over there, too,” said Deiyleh, who hopes that by broadening headphone sales to other schools, more teenagers will become aware of the importance of suicide prevention. “Hopefully, with one school at a time, we will start a movement to support suicide prevention,” said Dieyleh.
The Fire Within Program members as well as the Leadership class hope to commence headphone sales as soon as possible. Make sure to support your fellow Spartans by buying a pair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn0h1fbAyOc
