On October 24, 2018, 9 Purchase Line students and I were sent to Lockhaven University for a
conference based on leadership. There, with a handful of other high school students, we discussed the
growing issues that are arising among our peers. Meghan Blevis spoke with us about what the PAYS
surveys are and their importance. She gave a great presentation about our local scores and what the
PAYS statistics are telling us. Needless to say, things are not as bad as we think they are. The next
speaker, Joe Markiewicz, showed us how a push for positivity can change schools just like ours. As the
conference was wrapping up, we realized how much power we have to make a difference in Purchase
Line. This is when we came up with our kindness campaign- You Belong. To sum it up, You Belong is a
movement designed to show students that kindness and positivity is the root of everything. As a whole,
we would like to see the Purchase Line student body accept everyone and embrace each other's
differences. On a larger scale in the future, we hope to be able to share our message with teenagers
across the nation. I have been meeting with my group of peers ever since the conference to discuss how
we can make our vision come true.

On December 14, we presented our idea to the school. We really stressed how incredibly
important it is that its time we stop complaining and start working to make a difference together. The
reason I think You Belong has the potential to be effective is that it is student based. Instead of adults
taking action based on observations, its students taking action from experience. To call You Belong a
club, or an organization defeats the purpose. By going to Purchase Line, you belong.

To start off, we have been painting posters and creating messages to hopefully make at least
one student's day better. The response we have been getting is phenomenal! Many students are
interested but I have an urge to reach the students no club or sport has before. For now, those who are
involved are mainly the students that are naturally included in everything possible and do many
activities. There are many students at Purchase Line that think they have to be selected or make a cut in
order to be involved. We are going to find a way to reach these students. Two weeks ago, we invited
anyone who wanted, to stay after school with us to paint posters and get things going. We had about 15
people come and they all enjoyed it very much! My goal for the next session is trying to figure out a way
to include people that are not interested in painting but still want to spread positivity and again reach
out to those who feel they don't belong.

So how do we connect to people? I'm a firm believer in communication. I have created a twitter,
instagram, and snapchat for You Belong in which I try to stay active as much as possible to keep our
message in people's heads and communicate updates. We have countless followers from others in the
community that do not attend Purchase Line but support this movement. I know that in order to be as
effective as possible, we must reach out to the community too. We had t-shirts made and hope to make
them available to students in the near future. We've thrown around other ideas like buying bracelets to
give out to the student body. Because we want to go about this the right way, we're taking our time
deciding our next steps to make them as effective.

With your help I'm excited to make the purchase line community a positive place where everyone belongs.

Thank you,

Brooke Eyler