We begin our story at the start of the 2022-2023 school year. Founder of the University of Tennessee Chapter of Sources of Strength, Colin Zimmer, a freshman at the time, came into college looking for a mental health awareness organization and to his surprise, he couldn't find an active community to fill that need. Using what he knows about creating a club from back in high school, and the connections he gained the first week of being at UT, he took it into his own hands to start work on creating a club of his own.

It was official, we were a club in the eyes of the University. It was a feat that Colin and his 'founders' team, as he named it, was ecstatic about. However, Colin and his team had some unfortunate barriers to the mission he wanted to create with Sources of Strength, but he believed in the club, as his team did as well.

Here are the initial issues our chapter faces at UTK: 

 1) The first issue was the buy in fee, Sources of Strength requires a $5000 buy in fee to buy training and full support from the national chapter

2) The UTK chapter in the first Sources chapter in all of Tennessee at any grade level.

3) The UTK chapter was one of only 6 college chapters of Sources of Strength.

4) We are one, if not the only, Sources of Strength chapter that was fully started and ran by students

5) The school provides no current support for student groups not affiliated with a department who gives them funding

October 24th was our first ever campaign and we called the "We are Sources of Strength Week" and this was our introduction to campus for the first time ever.