RALLY Coalition Brings Full Day of Speakers to W-H-A Students

The Reclaiming and Advancing Leech Lake Youth (RALLY) Coalition aims to empower local youth and help them take ownership over their own health. On Monday, the organization hosted their biggest event yet, RALLY Wolves for Wellness, where speakers and presenters visited Walker-Hackensack-Akeley Secondary to educate students on a variety of topics.

“It’s a way to bring in our students and our community to talk about common issues and common goals within our area, specifically towards our demographic and our Native American population,” explained W-H-A online education teacher Katelin DeLorenzo.

“Some of these things would be like the 988 numbers that you can call for suicide prevention,” said Zachary Tooker, a special education paraprofessional at W-H-A. “How to deal with our opioid crisis and what that means if you’re a kid living around that.”

More than 300 students in grades six through 12 had a full day of speakers present, who addressed many different topics such as cultural identity, mental health, grief, and more. RALLY believes that the sooner people are educated on tough topics, the better.

“The more we can shape their brains now, the more likely they are to be shaped positively down the road,” said DeLorenzo.

“By having them all here and exposing them to this sort of knowledge is going to pay it forward towards our community tenfold,” added Tooker. “I think if you teach kids young about these important issues, then we’re going to have more responsible adults in the future.”

RALLY Wolves for Wellness was dedicated to promoting emotional, cultural, and physical wellness.

“The more we talk about stuff like this, the more relationship and connection we have with our students,” DeLorenzo said. “When we have stuff like this, it brings us together to bring our students more towards a successful outcome.”

These presentations, and the event as a whole, are also aimed at educating the community about what is going on in the school.

“We’re not just handing out worksheets and papers,” she stated. “We’re listening to the kids. We’re trying to get kids to think for themselves and to think outside the box. And that doesn’t happen with a paper test, that happens with conversations and opportunities to listen to each other.”

More than 20 different speakers and presenters were at the event.