Wauconda FBLA service project shows kindness counts
Estefany Garcia, Karly Pikel and Kelly Poyo, students of Wauconda High School, are the creators of this year's FBLA Community Service Project. This project is called MASK Suicide, with MASK standing for Maximize Awareness, Spread Kindness.
This acronym outlines the project's main goals: to educate people within the school and community on the warning signs of suicide and how to get help, as well as to spread kindness and positivity around the high school and throughout the community of Wauconda.
In order to kick off the project, these three students decided to write 1,600 encouraging notes, which is one for every student, teacher and staff member at Wauconda High School. They called them kindness cards. Resources such as the National Suicide Hotline and other phone numbers that someone could call/text if they needed help through a crisis, as well as a note or quote aiming to brighten the recipient's day, were included on the cards.
The students had to print the resources onto colored paper and cut each paper into slips to prepare for the notes to be handwritten.
In order to complete the lofty task of handwriting all of these notes, Wauconda FBLA advisers were generous enough to stay after school and supervise the MASK team along with a group of about 30 other students that helped write the cards.
As a group, they were able to finish all 1,600 cards in less than two hours, and team members said it was so encouraging to be able to see the joy students writing the cards experienced in the process.
Two days later, they put a note into each teacher's mailbox. They then gathered several of the students who helped write the notes to join them in passing out the cards during seventh period.
They separated the cards into piles for each class of students during that hour and split up to different parts of the school to distribute them. Both teachers and students were surprised, touched, and thankful e.
Teachers, administrators, and students posted on social media about their notes, mentioning how excited they were upon receiving them.
The students also gave a card to each of the other staff members in the building, and that was one of the most special parts of the entire event.
Karly Pikel was able to hand out kindness cards to each of the lunch ladies, and one of their reactions specifically stood out. As Pikel handed a note to one lunch lady, she explained that she hoped it would brighten her day. Immediately after hearing that, the lunch lady was in awe that it was written just for her.
Pikel said she was "able to feel the lady's graciousness as a smile stretched across her face," and in that moment she knew they "were doing something right."
Pikel and Poyo were also able to head over to the School District 118 office with adviser Wendy Mills to give kindness cards to staff members there. All of them seemed very grateful for the notes.
In a survey that the students created and sent to the whole school regarding this initiative, 87.1 percent of respondents said that the note had a positive impact on his or her day, and 85.5 percent of them reported that activities like this create a more positive, supportive atmosphere in the school, which is one of MASK Suicide's main goals.
The students behind this project are very excited at the responses they have received from their teachers and peers, and are looking forward to future opportunities to remind the people around them how valuable they are and that they are never alone.
• To submit Your news, go to dailyherald.com/share.