By Noah Becker, Current Staff
Come for the food, stay for information about mental wellness.
Through an event at the West Bend High Schools called Day of Hope, the Youth Impact Club plans to raise mental health awareness and educate the public about suicide prevention. Thursday’s program will consist of two speakers as well as a free meal catered by Qdoba and will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the East cafeteria.
There will be two speakers at the event. The first will be Carson Molle, who is a sophomore in college. He is a suicide attempt survivor and now shares his message across the state. You can access more of his information here.
The other speaker will be Tasha Schuh, who tours nationally speaking to youth about her message of PATH (Providing Access to Healing). More about her story can be found here.
Elena Chamberlain, president of the Youth Impact Club, said that the Day of Hope “will be an incredibly powerful event that will provide parents, educators, students, and other community members with the background and resources to get help for themselves and to help other people who they recognize might need it.”
Students should know that there are other people in our community of all ages that care about these issues and want to break the stigma around mental health, according to Chamberlain. She added that students might recognize teachers, bosses, members of their churches and other community members.
“This event is incredibly important to everyone in our club because it will be reaching one of our largest audiences yet,” Chamberlain said. “We have poured a lot of hard work into this event and it will be so exciting to see it all paying off.”
Jackie Schmoldt, a West social studies teacher who advises the Youth Impact Club and organized the Day of Hope, says that she wants students to be inspired by the speakers.
“If any of them feel overwhelmed or even suicidal, these speakers will give them some hope, that they know they will survive this,” Schmoldt said.
(Top image: Photo by Rigos101, used with permission via Wikimedia Commons.)
The West Bend Current 
Nice job Noah. Thanks for helping us spread the word about this important opportunity to spread information about mental wellness.