Students at Colmer Middle School in Pascagoula spreading hope and positivity through the school’s Hope Squad

Students at Colmer Middle School in Pascagoula are being the change they want to be by sharing positivity through the Hope Squad.

‍

Wednesday afternoon the Hope Squad of 16 students encouraged their fellow peers in their lunch period to write positive words of affirmation to attach to the school’s Hope Tree in the cafeteria, one of their first major outreach efforts of the year.

‍

Hope Squad members and their advisor share more on how their mission to end teen suicide is an ever-growing effort. Counselor Talacia Lamb said, “Since we’ve even started the program, we’ve had a lot of students who aren’t in the Hope Squad, who’ve been referring kids to the counselors and saying like, hey, I have this friend going or I noticed this. Can you please just check on them? So, the hope is really spreading from getting this program started and getting this idea out there to our students.”

‍

Eighth grader Darrien McCain said, “I feel like some kids are overlooked, or like some parents expect their kids to be stronger than what they are, but at the end of the day, we all kids and feelings matters.”

‍

“What I’ll tell people to just keep going. And even if you’re religious, not Christianity, but pray to who you like worship. It’s also, I mean talk to the friends that can get down to earth with you, because you need to find somebody that’s on the same level. I may not be suicidal, but I can also tell you about like situations I’ve been in.”

‍

“I want to show students that it’s good in the world is that everything being all bad.”

‍

Students of the Hope Squad say this is one of many activities they look to do throughout the year to inspire those around them to keep going.