School Community Celebrates Sources of Strength

Sources of Strength is a mental health awareness program that harnesses the power of peer social connections to prevent suicide and promote relationship-building between students and caring adults. One of the main pillars of the Sources of Strength program is the strength wheel, in which there are eight quadrants, each representing a strength we should lean into, grow and encourage in others.  Those strengths are physical health, mental health, positive friends, family support, generosity, spirituality, mentors and healthy activities.

Barstow’s Sources of Strength student organization planned activities to engage our school and community in a fun way and to get students and staff talking about, engaging in and developing their strengths and connections to others. During the Sources of Strength week, each day focused on one of the strengths, in a variety of ways: 

Highlights throughout the week involved our peer leaders from the Sources of Strength program engaging with their friends and mentors in photos, celebrating and highlighting mental health awareness, raising money in the cold and the rain in the circle, seeing droves of students flocking to the tables to write cards for their faculty mentors and trusted adults and all of the fun and focus the students gave towards making all different kinds of friendship bracelets. Our students are impressive, empathetic, resourceful and engaging, and they are still young people, who need our support and understanding.  It is a true gift to have this program at our school and have all of our school community benefit and take part in its mission which is spreading messages of hope, health and strength.