"Stay Woke"

At Hornby High we have been asked how we can have a positive impact on our community?

To do this first we had to choose a topic. I chose teen suicide because it is something that I think affects too many people in our community and I would like to find some way to make a difference.

We had to work in groups that had a similar vision to us. Other people that had a similar vision to me were Alby and Scott. We formed a group called “Stay woke”.

To help us understand teen suicide further we needed to find websites that gave us information on what is what and what you can do. Here is a list of the websites we found:

Website Name	Link	Date we accessed site
Stuff	http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/85305366/The-highest-rate-of-teen-suicide-in-the-developed-world	20/10/17
Stats Nz	http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/snapshots-of-nz/nz-social-indicators/Home/Health/suicide.aspx	20/10/17
Stuff	http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/85452513/canterbury-records-most-suicides-in-new-zealand	20/10/17
Depression.org	https://depression.org.nz/help-someone/	20/10/17
health.com	http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20452135,00.html	20/10/17

We then had to answer some questions about our topic:

Who is affected? Family, friends, teenager, community

What are the issues? Loss of life, negative impact on community.

When and how did this start? It has been happening for a while but with the rise of social media and cyber bullying it is becoming more prevalent.

Where is it happening? All over the world. The statistics for Christchurch in particular are really scary.

Why is this happening? Teens with depression or anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, teens seeing no other way out.

Then we had to say what we plan to do to help solve this issue:

We want to make a difference in our community by providing students a safe place to talk about their issues and know that: “It’s okay to not be okay, but it’s not okay not to talk about it!”