Breakfast Club, a group that is open to everyone and provides a safe space for students to speak without judgment, plans to focus on mental health and awareness in upcoming events.

Up first is “Hope Walks Here.” A collaboration with South, this event will take place on May 18th at BSSHS’s football stadium. Registration will be at 9:00 am and walk will start at 10:00 am, interested parties can join the walk through website afsp.org/bsshs or sign up at the walk.

The walk itself was inspired by families who were affected by teen suicide and wanted to bring attention to the importance of mental health.

“Breakfast Club has done another walk called “Walk Out Of The Darkness,” which was put together by two families who lost someone by suicide that was a teen in high school. They put together a walk to bring awareness. Dwila (Funk), social worker at South has taken it over and created “Hope Walks Here” through that,” social worker and Breakfast Club sponsor Erica Gordon said.

In addition to the walk, Breakfast Club plans to plant flowers, weather and construction permitting, between the cafeteria and the 500 building. Gordon hopes the flowers and beautification will brighten people’s spirits.

“(We) just (want to) make it a nice place where kids can hangout, to make it pretty and beautiful. When people see flowers they smile,” Gordon said.

Senior Kailyan Klotz, Breakfast Club captain, looks forward to planting flowers, which she feels will benefit everyone, not just Breakfast Club students.

“I am really excited to get out my shovel, put on my work pants and plant all the flowers,” Klotz said. 

For co captain junior Tirzah Demeire, the best thing about Breakfast Club is the open forum.

“My favorite thing is having open discussion where people can talk about whatever is going on. I like having a place where people can come and feel free to talk,” Dameire said.

Dameire’s leadership role in Breakfast Club has opened doors for her to help her classmates.

“What I enjoy most about being co captain is helping people and taking charge of something that affects people and being able to connect to other people through the things I’m good at,  like conversations and doing things around the school,” Demeire said.

Similarly, Klotz enjoyed focusing on the mental health awareness aspect that Breakfast Club promotes. She did a “where is your mental health?” project over this school year. People would circle a number from one to ten regarding their mental health at that time versus where they would like to see it. Klotz liked seeing the progress from people that went up which was over half the people that did one.

With the school year ending, Dameire is already thinking about plans for the upcoming year.

“Next year I would like to make goals, and one thing I want to work on a lot is reducing mental health stigma and being more educational to people outside of Breakfast club. I want to do more awareness things because I think that’s important,” Dameire said.