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Suicide Prevention Essay

Name: Samantha Riordan
From: YORKVILLE, IL
Votes: 0

Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States making up at least forty
four thousands deaths every year. This epidemic was very personal to
me and my community. Within the past ten years there have been
numerous suicide related deaths in my high school, and the youngest
only 10 years old. I could not just sit around and do nothing as
families and students got destroyed. Fortunately for me I am on the
executive board at a club in my school named TRY club. The name
stands for teens reaching youth and advocates teen and youth
outreach. As a teenager I feel that I represent the future and if I
do my part than deaths due to suicide will decrease. Therefore, along
with the help of my fellow board members we decided to plan a suicide
prevention event. Every year my town has an event in July that is
called “The Summer Solstice.” The event brings the town together,
offers good food and great music. We decided this place would be the
perfect venue to host our booth and bring awareness to the epidemic
that is affecting teens today. First, I started going around the
local businesses within my community, asking for donations like gift
cards, or anything they could supply. This was a very long process
but eventually we completed the task. The next thing we had to do was
to decide what would be held at our event. We offered many temporary
tattoos and stickers in the form of a semi colon, which represents
that an author could’ve ended a sentence but choose not too. The
semicolon movement is very prevalent in the Suicide Prevention
community and carries a great message. All that we had left was to
host the event, we decided to span the event for two days. We
collected all the donations and put them in baskets to be raffled
off. Eventually, after volunteering all day it was time to count up
how much money could be donated. We donated all of the profits to
Suicide Prevention Services of America. In the end we raised one
thousand and two hundred dollars within two days worth. We were all
extremely overjoyed and fortunate to do anything at all to help.
Overall, this experience was extremely valuable to me. I cannot wait
to see what else I do in the future.