Jessica McGinnis asked Allen County Commissioners Tuesday to help sponsor a motivational speaker geared toward high school students.
McGinnis, a community coordinator with the Southeast Kansas Mental Health Center, made the request on behalf of the Allen County Multi-Agency team (ACMAT), on which she also serves.
The March 21 event will reach approximately 1,000 students county-wide in grades six through 12, according to McGinnis. “We believe your endorsement and sponsorship will contribute to making it a successful event,” she said. McGinnis is requesting $1,500.
The event will feature speaker Tony Hoffman at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
“The primary objective is to empower our youth and inspire them to make positive changes,” she added. “We really want to focus on substance prevention and mental health and create positive decision making. We’re thrilled to bring Hoffman in. He’s going to speak about his struggles with anxiety, depression and suicide ideation.”
As a promising BMX racer, Hoffman became addicted to drugs in high school. He suffered from poor mental health and made poor choices leading to crimes and homelessness, which eventually landed him in prison. “Since his parole, he talks about his success of becoming a BMX professional rider,” said McGinnis. “He also was able to coach Brooke Crain to fourth place at the Rio Olympics. We’re really excited to hear those kinds of stories from him and the goal is to just make some powerful and inspiring engagement with the youth.”
Hoffman is also the founder of pH Wellness — a provider of drug and alcohol detox, therapy and treatment in California.
ACMAT is partnering with the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services (KDADS) in hosting the event.
“We are part of their Youth Leaders in Kansas (YLINK) leadership group that focuses on mental health and substance prevention,” she noted. “We’re going to be using the majority of those grant funds towards this event, but anything we can do to offset and also keep funds for future events for the kids, that’s kind of our goal.”
The total cost for the speaker is $9,200. Each school within YLINK gets $3,000 in the form of a reimbursement and it takes spproximately 30 to 90 days to get the money reimbursed.
“I like that you’re including all the school districts,” noted Commissioner Bruce Symes. “This is a great find — a person with this experience to share.” Symes asked McGinnis if ACMAT is planning on making this an annual event, or if it’s a one-time occurrence. “We are in the ninth year of the Drug Free Community grant, so we are looking at sustainability in being able to do events like this,” she said. “By partnering with YLINK and Resist (a statewide tobacco initiative) — we are looking at how to sustain this. This is a one-time speaker event, as of right now.”
With a motion and a second, the commission unanimously approved a sponsorship of $1,500 for the Tony Hoffman speaker event.
IN OTHER NEWS:
• Patrick Zirjacks introduced himself to the commission as the newest member of the Thrive Allen County team. He is the Community Engagement Coordinator. “I wanted to introduce myself because I figured, at some point, our interests are going to hopefully intersect in doing good things for Allen County,” he said. Explaining his role at Thrive, he noted that he will be putting together the Iola Community Engagement meeting in June, as well as Moran community engagement. “We basically get out and engage with the community — find out what their concerns are and work to come up with solutions through grants to help them out,” he said.
• Public Works Director Mitch Garner gave an update on pipe work at the new airport hangar. Approximately 287 feet of pipe has to be put across the ditch. He noted that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) doesn’t want the Public Works department doing the pipe or dirt work yet, until the FAA is able to look at everything. Commissioner David Lee asked if the FAA gave a reason as to the delay. “They want to see the plans and size of the building and then they’ll decide,” he said. “And they might not want us to do all of that section at one time, just the one hangar first.”
