The stated purpose of the Hope Squad suicide prevention program is to foster a peer-to-peer approach that empowers its student members to “intentionally reach out to peers and become instruments of change” across schools nationwide.

And what better way to reach that objective than bringing students from different schools together to learn from each other?

Hope Squad officers from over a dozen high schools in Utah and one in Idaho met for a training program Tuesday morning at the ScenicView Academy in Provo to discuss suicide prevention skills and how to teach those skills to their classmates.

Through a variety of group activities, presentations from student leaders and even a game of Kahoot!, members of the Provo-founded organization got to learn what each chapter is doing in their respective schools to cultivate a culture of inclusiveness and resiliency.

“They’re very capable students,” said Cathy Bledsoe, assistant director at Hope4Utah. “They have great leadership skills, and this is just an opportunity for them to develop those skills, perfect them, visit with kids from other schools and learn what they’re doing so that they can go back and do more at their school.”

Hope Squad officers are not taught to be professional counselors but rather, as Bledsoe put it, to be “vehicles” to help other kids know it’s OK to reach out and talk to an adult when they are struggling.

And across the hundreds of Utah chapters in the organization, students have come up with creative ideas to make a change.

Hope Sybrowsky, president of the Timpview High School Hope Squad, shared with Tuesday’s group that she learned at last year’s training how one school’s chapter was bringing duck key chains to classmates, and she decided to put her own twist on the activity.

Sybrowsky and her committee purchased tiny plastic ducks in bulk, attached positive messages written on Post-it notes to the ducks then hid them around the school for kids to find.

“I think we sometimes have the mindset that school is just the same routine every single day,” Sybrowsky said. “It can get really boring, even after just a week of school. So I think having the ducks, just like a little surprise, is a little way to say, ‘Stay in school, still come to school, because we appreciate you being here.'”

At the Northern Utah Academy for Math, Engineering and Science in Layton, or NUAMES, the Hope Squad committee is planning “Hope Week,” where each day has a certain theme.

“H is help others, O is opportunities for thankfulness, P is positivity and E is encouragement,” NUAMES student Katelyn Talbit said. “We have an activity planned for each day that brings hope in.”

Talbit and her classmate Anna Jenkins each said they joined the Hope Squad because they have family members who have struggled with mental health, and they wanted to help others who deal with it.

Surrounded by other students with similar motivations, the two NUAMES students think learning from the training will be beneficial for their school.

“Each school is different,” Jenkins said. “We go to a school full of nerds. So being able to see what other schools — when there’s a lot more outgoing kids — are doing and being able to see if we can twist it into fitting our school is very good, and it also helps others to reach the one in the corner.”

Bledsoe hopes the rest of the students take home a similar message.

“I would love for them to go back and feel empowered to share that there’s hope, and that if you’re struggling, that you can get help,” Bledsoe said. “I think just keeping the doors of communication open, so that kids understand that if they’re hurting, everybody hurts sometime or another, and that sometimes it goes away and sometimes it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t, it’s OK to get help.”

Hope Squad and Hope4Utah were founded in 2004 in Provo by Gregory Hudnall. Since its inception, Hope Squad has grown to have chapters at nearly 400 schools in Utah and over 1,700 schools in the United States and Canada.

The organization’s mission is to “reduce youth suicide through education, training, and peer intervention.” To learn more, visit hope4utah.com or hopesquad.com.