Inside Samo's new peer leadership club: Margaret's Place
By Megan Suchet, Copy Editor
Founded by Joe Torre’s Safe At Home foundation, Margaret’s Place offers a variety of free violence intervention and prevention mental health services and resources to students, parents and staff. It has two branches: intervention programs and prevention programs. The intervention programs provide counseling services for students who have suffered trauma or violence in their home, school or community. Though there is an eligibility requirement to receive these services, the prevention programs, which include drop-in lunches, peer leadership and workshops, are open to all students. Based in New York, the program has now expanded to various schools throughout L.A., Samo among them.
The Peer Leadership Club (PLC), recently started at Samo, is among the services that make up the prevention program by Margaret’s Place. It is an ambassador program for students who want to use their voices to explore, discuss and raise awareness through schoolwide campaigns about violence-related issues such as domestic violence, consent and social justice. The club hopes to shed light on the issues that are not always talked about so openly. It meets every Wednesday after school from 3:15 p.m.- 4:15 p.m. via Zoom.
The club is entirely student-run as members, called Peer Leaders, collaborate with each other to bring discussion topics to the meetings each week. Each meeting is then defined by a different theme that the club explores. Club activities include watching clips of a movie or an image of some sort that relates to the theme and building meaningful discussions from them.
Beta Abdolahi is the Margaret’s Place counselor at Samo and the first to start a PLC at Samo. As an art therapist, Beta uses art wherever and whenever possible and is excited to take advantage of it here.
“Art is such a great way to express yourself and with art therapy, it's not so much about the end product than the process. I would definitely like to incorporate that in our meetings, just because why not? Let’s use our creativity to make an impact,” Beta said.
PLC has been adapted to a digital format as COVID-19 effectively ended in-person activities. As February was Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, the club created numerous informational flyers and held an awareness campaign activity day on Feb. 22 during lunch, where attendees learned and discussed the characteristics of healthy, unhealthy and abusive relationships. Students also had the chance to win a $20 gift card to In-N-Out in a game of Kahoot. PLC will host another campaign on Apr. 28 highlighting “Denim Day” for Sexual Assault Awareness.