SAUGUS — Thursday afternoon, Saugus Middle High School had its Self Care Fair hosted by the school’s Students in Action club and funded by a MassCALL3 grant.
The fair was a way for students to unwind after school with friends without worrying about having to pay for anything. The event featured a baby animal petting zoo with goats, chicks, bunnies, a pig and ducks, as well as music, a photo booth, henna, booths from organizations like the NAN Project and Eliot Community Human Services, slush, pizza and raffles.
Right at the bell students found their friends and walked through the school visiting booths, eating and letting loose after their school day.
President of the Students in Action, Gia Saunders, was one of many club members helping run the fair, ensuring students had a good time.
“I think it’s really important to bring the school together. I feel like high school has always felt really divided, not always on purpose, but I think it’s good to create a space for students where everyone can just come together, have fun and kind of settle down. It’s finals week for a lot of us, so it’s good to calm your mind, have fun and get free food. Everybody loves that,” Saunders said.
Saunders first heard about Students in Action when she was in eighth grade. Seeing how everyone in the club at the time seemed welcoming and that the club was doing great community work, she was interested in joining.
Saunders also pointed out the resources available to fellow students at the fair.
“We have Embrace Pathways, JRI (Justice Resource Institute), the YMCA… I think all of the students should definitely visit those tables and make sure they know that they’re not alone and the reason we have this event is because we want to share these resources for extracurriculars and mental health help,” she said.
Krystal Mellonakos-Garay, the regional coordinator of the MassCALL3 Youth Substance Use Prevention grant, also spoke about her involvement with Students in Action.
“Through the MassCALL3 Youth Substance grant that I manage, we are able to fund initiatives that Students in Action are interested in. So we’re able to pay for them to attend leadership conferences throughout the school year, for the Self Care Fair and to pay them student stipends at the end of the school year for just promoting mental health and doing initiatives throughout the school year to promote mental health and wellbeing,” Mellonakos-Garay said.
She continued that the goal right now is to create an environment at school where students are creating good memories and associating school a fun time.
“We know school is one of the biggest stressors, if not the biggest stressor, that a lot of our young people are faced with. This is to say, ‘Hey, school can be fun and can be a place for you to build community and have good memories.’ That’s kind of the goal of what we’re doing here,” she said.
Mellonakos-Garay explained that the idea of the fair came from Revere where the fair has been happening for around 10 years. She explained that it came about when they saw a need for communities to bring in resources to the schools that they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Bethany Norton, who started working at the school as a counselor in 2010, is the advisor of Students in Action and helped form the club.
“I was hired as the advisor of peer mediation, which was an existing club here since the early ’90s. At the time, the members of my club were telling me that they felt under represented or minority students were feeling like they didn’t belong. And with that information, we started a mission to try to make the school more inclusive, and a space that everyone felt like they could belong and fell welcome,” Norton said.
From there the name peer mediation morphed into what is now Students in Action and Norton said they now have a mission to do things for all people to feel loved and supported.
When asked why she feels events like the Self Care Fair are so important, she said, “The Self Care Fair is one of the biggest events that we do because we organize it in such a way that people don’t have to coordinate a ride, they don’t have to pay for anything. It’s available to every single child who comes to this school upon dismissal… It also allows students who might not have a safe space to go to, to just be in a place that’s safe and supportive and they can get free food and have a good time,” Norton said.
