DELTON, Mich.- Six students in Delton committed suicide last year, and now the community is trying to implement programs to put a stop to that trend.
“We decided no more, not even one more,” Mary Collier, a volunteer for the new Delton ROCKS awareness program, said. “We decided that we could come up with programs to reach kids and to hopefully answer their questions and solve some of their problems so that was not a solution for them.”
The six teens in the Delton-Kellogg community that took their own lives were a wakeup call for Collier and many others in the community.
That’s when Delton ROCKS was created, Reaching Our Communities Kids with Support.
Their latest project is the “We’ve Got Your Back Shack.” Organizers say it’s an effort to make kids confident in what they wear and to cut down on bullying.
“We have kids that are coming in for interview clothes because all they have are jeans and a t-shirt.” Collier said. “We have 37 prom dresses that we loan out and they come back and we clean them.”
It’s a recycling store where everything is free no matter who you are or where you’re from.
The CDC says 4,600 people ages 10-24 commit suicide every year. Sixteen percent of high school teens admit to seriously considering suicide. Delton ROCKS is working on suicide prevention and anti-bullying programs and raising money on the local level to bring them to Delton- Kellogg schools.
You can donate to their mission through the Barry Community Foundation.
