Day of Service Freshman Blogging

 

 

On Saturday September 6th 2014 Richard Stockton College held its 11th annual Day of Service from 8:30am to 3:30pm. The goal of the Day of Service has always been to promote community service both on-campus and in the communities surrounding Stockton. Different clubs and organizations prepared unique service projects and students were able to choose what service project they would like to be a part of.                         Perhaps, one of the most popular choices was a suicide awareness and prevention project, organized by the club Active Minds.Over twenty students gathered around the Campus Center coffeehouse area in order to help Active Minds prepare for their upcoming suicide prevention week in October.                                                                                   One aspect of the project included making posters for the suicide walk that will occur on Sunday October 5th. Each group designing a poster was given a different fact or statistic that related to suicide or depression awareness. Meanwhile, another group within the project was to cut and pin ribbons for the suicide walk. Ribbons varied in color as each color represented why the participant would be walking. Also a third group was working with shoes. The Active Minds club previously collected shoes to be displayed on the walk with the number of pairs coinciding with the number of college suicides in the last year. The students assisting with this part of the project were finding matching pairs for the shoes and tying them together to be displayed for the walk.                                                                                                                        Afterwards, Active Minds held a brief reflection session. Each person who helped with the project shared his or her experiences with depression and suicide in their lives and offered ways to battle the stigma in day-to-day routine. All left with a sense of fulfillment and knowledge that they were promoting a fight against one of the most deadly disorders in teens.