Research Paper On Project Semicolon

Mental illness was infiltrating my town, my school, my family, and was still being ignored. I would crawl into my bed as my busy school day was clouding my head and decide to open Tumblr, maybe distract myself from the stress, the anxiety, but instead find myself sifting through hundreds of posts from my friends about their own struggles.
“No one would notice if I wasn't there tomorrow”
“Worthless. Might as well just not be alive.”
“I feel nothing anymore.” Suicide, depression, and anxiety were affecting not only me, but almost everyone in my school. Individually we knew, but we continued to overlook, while all of us were suffering. I could not sit there and witness my best friends feeling worthless, feeling alone. So I decided to get up,
and do something. As my community had been personally affected by the death of a man who took his own life, we had a yearly walk called the Warrior Run that raised money for suicide prevention. I had volunteered at the run yearly, but it wasn't until I was approached by this man’s wife , that I had an opportunity to make a difference among my peers and fight against these diseases. My best friend, Madison, and I inspired by Mrs. Miller's story and impact on our community, created a suicide prevention fund raising and mental health awareness group called, Team All of Us. All of Us have been affected by the tragedy of suicide or struggles with mental illnesses, and we want to fight to help these causes. We started small with a fundraiser of selling T shirts in our high school and community, in order to donate money to The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention(AFSP). This foundation funds research, advocates for public policy, and supports those affected by suicide, specifically myself and my family as I am a survivor. With this fundraiser we donated $500, and aided in starting the conversations about mental illness and suicide in our community. We were not going to stop there, as our group was gaining attention on social media, we decided to continue with fundraisers and inviting people to the yearly walk. By the end of our first year we had raised over $1,500 for AFSP with T shirt sales and donations, and gained a lot of experience about organizing and leading a fundraising group.
Not to say the founding or running of our group was a piece of cake; Madison and I ran into problems with our selling tactics and ended up losing money by over ordering products that we could not sell.
We eventually raised the amount of money back by selling these extra T-Shirts later, and learned to be extremely organized in our next steps. This organization was immensely successful in our next fundraiser of selling semi colon bracelets, inspired by Project Semicolon, “A Semicolon is used when an author could've ended a sentence but chose not to. You are the author and the sentence is your life” (Project
Semicolon).
Project Semicolon bracelets were our most successful fundraiser with $1,000 of proceeds and donations going directly to AFSP.
These bracelets helped us reach out in our community and share more about our personal experiences with suicide and mental illness, all while raising more money for our fund. I had many underclassmen and parents reaching out to me daily, telling me how much our presence in the community has opened their eyes about the prevalence of mental illness in our school and town. This filled my heart with joy; this was our goal. Yes, we wanted to raise money to help the individuals and families in need, but our number one goal was to raise awareness. Suicide and Mental Illness is still something surrounded by a large stigma and many people just do not recognize it. It took someone to stand up and start talking about the problems we all face in order for everyone to come together and help the problem. I was glad to be that person, and the whole experience has helped me to grow in my leadership skills, organization skills, and to learn more about the mental illnesses I struggled with, depression and anxiety. Our group has a large city wide fundraising event in the works, and although the organization is strenuous, the outcome fulfills my heart, and I hope to continue this work, battling mental illness and suicide, for my
lifetime.