Glow Again

05.12.2017

Glow Again

"My name is Mariah Dellinger and I am a junior at Lake High School in Stark County Ohio. I am in a two year Health Tech Preparatory program with about 24 other students. We learn a variety of things from medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, oral practicals of the ankle, knee, hip, shoulder, back and hand, and we also get state certified to do the vision, hearing, blood pressure, muscle imbalance, stereopsis and color deficit health screenings at the elementary, middle and high schools around us. As a part of this program, our teacher partnered with a program called AmeriCorps through NEOMED (Northeast Ohio Medical School) and they have advisors come to help us set up projects to help our community. Myself and 8 other students chose depression as the topic of our project.

After a couple meetings of brainstorming, we came up with the idea to do a glow in the dark depression awareness walk around our high school stadium and track called "Glow Again." We decided to call it glow again because by the end of the event, we wanted those struggling with depression to be "glowing" and those who haven't struggled to stand with the others to "glow."

For Glow Again, we wrote a grant to NEOMED asking for glow sticks and silicone bracelets with the name and date of our even on it. We also wrote donation letters to local businesses to get pizza and water for our participants and also get gift cards and free pizza certificates for the raffle that we put on at the event and for decorations as well. For our participants, we also created a t-shirt design and took it to a local sports shop and they were glad to help us out. There was a $15 registration for everyone and it included glow sticks, a bracelet, a t-shirt, pizza and water. One of our group members grandpa is a DJ so we had music at Glow Again too!

The event was April 8th, 2017 from 7-9. About halfway through, we had a guest speaker get up and talk about his story and testimony. He was a graduate from our same high school and was a drug addict for ten years, but it all started from him suffering from severe depression. He came in to school to talk to our health classes the previous year and his story was so powerful and memorable that we knew we had to have him talk. We got his contact information and he was more than happy to speak. Glow Again was such a successful event and all together we raised and total of $943.15 for ADAA.

A couple weeks after Glow Again, we went to NEOMED to present our project to a panel of doctors. There were around 200 different varieties of projects so we were split up into groups. We were part of the depression, anxiety and mental health group that had around 40 projects. After presenting it was announced at the closing ceremony that Glow Again had won 1st place! Our group was so happy and it was very nice to see all of our hard work pay off. We knew we wanted to make a difference throughout our community, but we wanted to donate the money to a bigger organization like ADAA so we can spread our success even farther. We are so excited to be making a difference and we hope our money donation makes an impact in the lives of others."