GREEN: A team of young reporters and video producers from Green schools is bringing awareness about gun violence prevention to local airwaves.
On Dec. 14, 2012, the nation was rocked by the killing of 20 first-graders and six adults by a single shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
In response, the Start with Hello Call-to-Action Week initiative is launching throughout the country this week, with all five Green local schools participating.
The new Bulldog Beat reporting and video team is leading the local effort by creating programming that will be shared with classmates and the entire community during the school year through Green Community TV (Channel 16).
Launched last summer by Julie McMahan, the district’s director of communications and community relations, the team consists of: sixth-grader Rachel Pritchard, 12; seventh-graders Parker Doerrer and Saad Yousuf, both 12; seventh-graders Ella Hemphill, Sarah Sample and Xavier Adekunle, all 13; and sophomore Caroline Campbell, 16.
The group’s first production, The Sandy Hook Promise, was staged Thursday in the high school’s video production studio, where the students operated all the sound and video equipment and directed the 30-minute TV taping.
The program began airing daily on Monday.
The video features McMahan and Annie Stephens, the Ohio organizer for Sandy Hook Promise, a national nonprofit organization founded by some of the families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook shooting.
Stephens said the awareness week brings attention to the epidemic of social isolation in the schools and communities while empowering young people and adults to create a culture of inclusion and connectedness to reduce the risk of bullying, violence and depression.
“Our focus is on gun violence prevention and all violence before it happens,” Stephens said.
The organization offers four free programs to help kids and people who work with children identify and intervene prior to a tragic event happening, Stephens said prior to the taping. Programs can be downloaded from SandyHookPromise.org.
“As a mom, anybody familiar with what happened in Sandy Hook was riveted, and I certainly was,” said Stephens, a former sales representative and mother of two from Westerville. “I was completely shocked by the events that happened. When The Sandy Hook Promise started, I gravitated to the messages and became a promise leader, who is somebody who wants to bring the messages to my community. When the opportunity arose, I became their Ohio organizer.”
Stephens covers Ohio from Marion to the Great Lakes, while Sandra Lopez covers the southern half of the state. So far, she and Lopez have conducted hundreds of roundtables, and 100,000 kids have experienced the prevention programming.
“This is the first time I’ve done a video like this,” she said. “It’s very exciting. It’s going to energize the group — not like they need it — but it is going to be really neat to have that [the video] as a community event. And I am thrilled to be a part of it.”
Green and several other schools in Portage, Medina, Stark, Summit and Wayne counties are among almost 200 schools participating in Ohio and almost 800 nationwide.
Green Mayor Gerard Neugebauer will issue his first proclamation at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, declaring the week Start With Hello Week.
Retired Green teacher Chuck Lyons, who is the Bulldog Beat’s video production supervisor, said the team picked up his directions much faster than some of his former students and did a good job in their first time operating the equipment.
Assemblies were held in Green schools on Monday to “Pledge to Say Hello. “Random acts of kindness” will be the districtwide theme Tuesday.
All students and staff are encouraged to wear green — Sandy Hook’s color — on Wednesday, even though Green’s colors are orange and black.
Thursday’s events will feature “Hello in Any Language,” and Friday is designated as “No One Eats Alone Day.”
George W. Davis can be reached at: mediaman@sssnet.com.