Marketing and Communication students at College of Western Idaho (CWI) launched an ambitious project called Hope for Idaho this semester with Dan Garrity, Marketing and Communication Faculty, to produce a website highlighting suicide prevention.
Students in three separate classes of Garrity’s – Multimedia Storytelling, Intro to Video Production, and Principles of Promotion – embarked on the project and worked together to complete the website.
“It’s been a dream of mine for quite some time,” said Garrity. “I’ve always been impressed with how excited and motivated students get when they see how they can apply what they’re studying to a real-world issue of social justice.”
“I think the biggest thing that has impacted me emotionally is just how everyone came together to build this,” says student, Jacob Ronnow. “I’ve had a lot of classes over the years where I didn’t even know the name of the person sitting next to me. But we aren’t just a class. I feel like we’ve become a team working on this. And it’s really built a sense of community within our small group that’s gotten to me emotionally. It’s quite beautiful how everyone puts so much into their own little contribution.”
Students had an opportunity to use the storytelling skills they cultivated over the semester to illustrate the importance of addressing suicide awareness in the community and shine a light on the issue with their stories.
Garrity continued, “It’s a very sensitive topic. It turns out we didn’t have to go outside of our own classroom. All the stories on the site come from students in one class, our class. It just convinced me even further how rampant the issue is and how important it was to start a dialogue. Now we’re anxious to see what kind of a difference we can make with the broader community.”
To explore videos, podcasts, and stories generated by the class - visit the Hope for Idaho website.
