Sitting in Starbucks on Main Avenue, senior Dylan Putnam jots down notes for the Stephanie Goetz Mental Wellness Initiative (SGMWI) meeting as the group brainstorms how to plan their next project. As secretary of the Student Board, this is one of Putnam’s many tasks including creating notes for each meeting and distributing them, through the SGMWI program.
On Aug. 11th, 2002 Valley News Live anchor Stephanie Goetz lost her brother Cameron to suicide and after in the fall of 2012, she approached her friend Abby Tow for advice.
“Stephanie realized that she ha¬d a platform to speak,” Tow said. “She launched the foundation to provide students and teachers resources needed to remove barriers to care for student mental health.”
Tow originally met Goetz when she was a freelance photographer for Area Woman Magazine and the two became friends. After, Tow ended up on the founding board for the foundation and later became a full time Executive Director for SGMWI in April of 2013.
A foundation Board Member came up with an idea to create a board of student leaders because they believed that the foundation was for the students and was all about the students.
“The student board is in the schools to help erase the stigma of mental illness and provide their family and their friends and their peers information about mental illness and how to be healthy and create a culture of support in their schools,” Tow said.
The student board is composed of 12 students including six from West Fargo: juniors Kelsey Bishoff, Danielle Dube, Tailor Rudolph, Skyler Stoner, Isabel Waite and senior Putnam.
Tow is blown away by the passion and resilience the student board showcases for the foundation.
“It is totally refreshing to me to be surrounded by such amazing people,” Tow said. “Many of society’s great changes and breakthroughs have been because of youth driven movements.”
Junior Skyler Stoner, vice president of the student board, joined the movement after the loss of sophomore Tessa Miller and junior MacKenzie Walkin in December 2012.
“We wanted to help after Tessa and MacKenzie last year and we felt that there were other people who had some of the same troubles,” Stoner said. “It really helps students get the resources that they need.”
Including Stoner, Bishoff and Waite joined after the passing of their fellow classmates.
“I saw the affect that depression really has on teens, especially last year,” Waite said. “It really hits home for us to make an impact.”
The three students were introduced to the program through counselor Julie Hersch after they approached her with ideas to improve the school.
“We felt that [administration] didn’t know what to do or how to go about it and we wanted something to happen,” Waite said. “We needed a connection somehow and then Hersch connected us with Stephanie. It was like two pieces of a puzzle fitting perfectly together.”
To raise awareness for the organization, the student committee put together an all men’s volleyball tournament on Feb. 10th, 2014 at North High School. The event is a communitywide action project and stresses heavily the idea of “Imagine Thriving,” to create awareness of the stigmas that are attached to mental illnesses.
“Mental illness is no different than any physical disease and people need to understand that,” Tow said.
During the tournament, Goetz will be speaking to the audience about what is going on in each of the schools and promoting her “Imagine Thriving” campaign.
“It is about taking people who are in a moment of stress and makes them stop for a second and think about how they would feel if they were thriving,” Tow said. “We really want kids to know that there is always somewhere to turn for help.”
The money raised at the tournament is going to be donated to “Giving Hearts Day,” a statewide day for donations sponsored by DMF that will be matched by the company. According to Stoner, they have three goals: to hire student strategists, help offset costs for medicine and give students help they need.
“[The tournament] helps show that we are students so we know how other students feel,” Bishoff said. “It is easier for students to relate to other students.”
For more information about mental illnesses students are encouraged to go Imaginethriving.org and if interested in going to the Volleyball tournament, students can use #ImThriving on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook and get a reduced ticket into the game.