New club offers support for life’s tough times
March 4, 2016
Cleveland is sporting a new club on Thursdays, giving students a chance to get support.
Lato Buchanan, a senior, created a new club called Support Group. The idea behind this club is to give kids a chance to share their hardships and get support in return.
“Me and (teacher Gaye) Chapman were talking about having a safe place where people can come and talk about things they need support with, kinda like Leadership but less exclusive,” said Buchanan.
It all started because of the problems his friends and him have talked about, and then deciding to branch out to more people, knowing that there were many people beyond his friends who had something going on in their life that they needed support with.
The first meeting happened on Feb. 25. People introduced themselves and explained what was going on and how their day was. The students who weren’t talking listened. It was shocking to Buchanan how many people were willing to open up on the first day, but he thought it was encouraging as well.
“My goals for the group is just to create a better community, kind of a community where there’s togetherness and wellbeing,” said Buchanan. Though its focus is not to spread joy, it’s to allow people to share their burdens, which will make just as big of an impact.
“The point behind this is to create a space for people to talk about their stuff, the things we don’t usually get to talk about even with our friends because it feels too vulnerable,” said Chapman, who helped create the group. “Here, people feel love and acceptance and want to listen. I think this shows that we don’t have to talk about what’s going great in our lives all the time and we don’t have to feel like we’re putting someone out by talking about our problems, but actually opens up a deeper communication among friends and people here. We don’t have to push them aside.”
Even if you don’t have anything you want to share to the group, they welcome people to come in and be a support for people who might need it. Support Group happens on Thursdays at lunch in room 384.
