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Melanie Beadenkopf & Kara Balewicz
Melanie Beadenkopf & Kara Balewicz
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Melanie Beadenkopf: very creative, good at coming up with unique ideas, persuasive, loves helping people.
Kara Balewicz: good at communicating, very dedicated to things I'm passionate about, loves thinking of ways to help others, and already gives advice and suggestions that can benefit others like my friends and family.
Community need/issue:
Lack of awareness can make communities distant because of people feeling like outcasts from not knowing people are going through the same thing as them.
Having schools and workplaces not speak on the issues can make the students or employees struggle a lot to get work done because no one is aware of what they might be going through.
Check out our slide show presentation below!
Community partnership
We have partnered with the school counseling department at HHS.
We have talked to them about our ideas and make them aware of how the environment feels as a student. Then we hope to make any adjustments to our ideas to make them as realistic and helpful as possible.
Action plan:
Our plan is to create a social media account (preferably on tiktok) to post helpful outlets and tips to help with mental health issues. We want to try to break the stigma and stereotypes about these problems. Dealing with these struggles is very demonized and we want to show people that what they are going through can be helped and that they’re not “crazy”. What we will be doing is posting videos to calm anxiety and panic attacks, good outlets and resources that bring you peace and send you back into reality when you are in a moment of panic. Some of these resources will be podcasts, calm playlists, informative movies, and tips you can do yourself. We also will bring attention to more issues that aren’t talked about enough like OCD, insomnia, body dysmorphia, ect.
-After starting our account we want to communicate with the school counseling office and discuss ways to improve the overall stressful environment of school. Our main idea is we will suggest a private room where you can sit down and relax for a few minutes if you are very overwhelmed in your class. There will be a sign in sheet so you know if it is currently occupied. This room will require funding, we want our fundraiser to be covid safe so we plan on making a go fund me and posting about it on Holliston Happy on Facebook and the parents that support our idea will hopefully donate.
-The school currently does every other year check-ins with the students, we believe that this should be changed to a yearly check up. So many things can change in a year that it would be safest to make sure the students are ok yearly.
Updates:
We have actively been posting on our social media account and have gotten a positive response. Our main idea was to make a relaxing room in the school, but because of Covid we are not able to do that this year. We are welcome to assist when it will be attempted next year.
How can the community help:
Schools right now briefly talk about mental health but they don't go into depth and talk about how it affects every aspect of your life. They primarily talk about depression but rarely talk about the many other issues. Some students may not know about the issues that they have and believe everyone thinks the way that they do, so more knowledge on the subject and more awareness should be spread through schools. So we need from everyone is to have people not be afraid to speak and have it not be villainized.
Contact us at
Kara Balewicz- balewiczkar@students.holliston.k12.ma.us
Melanie Beadenkopf- beadenkopfmel@students.holliston.k12.ma.us
follow our tiktok
@oppenlystruggling
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