By Gauri Mangala
Features Editor
On Tuesday, Sept. 29, the Friends Helping Friends Club had their first meeting of the year. The club, which was started by students last year, was created to give students a place to talk about themselves and their lives and to spread awareness about bullying.
Friends Helping Friends’ advisor, Richard Greenberg, wants to focus on what the clubcan do “to bring about awareness to others and teach others to stop the violence and to stop the
bullying through simple educational practices.”
The club will meet twice each month, on the first and the third Tuesday of each month.The club’s next meeting will be on Tuesday, Oct. 6 and welcomes anyone who wants to join.
Students will be creating relationships with each other by sharing their own stories and be focusing on how to make Neshaminy a friendlier school.
“The realistic perspective is I don’t
think we can stop all bullying, but…if this club can help change some of the opinions in this
generation then maybe when they have their kids we can change more opinions in the next
generation and the next generation,” Greenberg said.
The club with be “teaming up with Gay Straight Alliance for Homecoming”, said Greenberg, and working one booth together. The two clubs hope to be able to work together more in the future, as well as to include peer mediation, as they all are working towards the same goal: acceptance.
“If we can learn acceptance- I don’t even want to say tolerance: tolerance just means that you’re complacent; that I can tolerate you but that doesn’t mean that I have to like you. If I can accept I’m different than you, [that] the differences are with me. That subtle change in the mindset [is] enough that sometimes the message can get through that it’s okay to be different,” Greenberg said.
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