Courtesy of Alisha Porter
No parent wants their child to be bullied or excluded. In 2007, Westerville mom and Board of Education member Cindy Crowe decided to do something about it, and started a movement that has grown exponentially.
“She was just a mom in Westerville who saw on The Oprah Winfrey Show about the organization Challenge Day and how it was an anti-bullying, student inclusion type program, and she wanted to bring it to Westerville,” says board member Tracy Davidson, who is also a member of the Westerville Education Challenge.
Crowe assembled a group of parents with high school-age children to found the organization. The first order of business was to raise funds to bring Challenge Day to all three Westerville high schools.
Crowe died in 2014 after a long battle with ALS, but the Westerville Education Challenge continued on.
“Our mentality is still staying true to our mission of helping children feel supported and included within our schools,” says Davidson.“But we have gone from … Challenge Day to supporting quite a few different initiatives that we now are able to support in our middle schools and high schools.”
The middle schools support a program called WEB (Where Everybody Belongs), a peer mentor group that connects eighth grade leaders with sixth grade students to help them transition from elementary to middle school.
“We also have a program called MODEL, which stands for Mentors Opening Doors, Enriching Lives,” says Davidson. “We have about 140 girls in our middle schools (for whom) we have community mentors come in once a month. They do different activities with them, all geared around self-esteem and setting goals and making positive choices.”
New this school year is the Hope Squad initiative, a peer-led suicide prevention program, and SERC, a social-emotional resource center. And, of course, the Westerville Education Challenge also supports Challenge Day.
“Challenge Day is just one day within the buildings that really addresses the themes of peer pressure and bullying and helping build that community of understanding and acceptance,” Davidson says.“We’ve tried to expand that and provide different resources for our kids that (offer)more of a year-long support system and not just a one and done.”
The ultimate goal of the WestervilleEducation Challenge is to empower students and provide resources.
“We really want every student to feel like they are included,” says Davidson, “and if bullying is happening, to be able to talk about it and be able to feel empowered to talk about it.”
Sarah Robinson is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at feedback@ cityscenemediagroup.com.
