Contributed by Justin Pendergrass
Stay Day started three years ago on the first week of September after the staff at MY House watched the Netflix show, “13 Reasons Why”. During a staff meeting, a MY House employee suggested that they begin focusing on suicide prevention and 13 reasons why NOT.
The director of MY House brought in Justin Pendergrass to begin working on this campaign after connecting with him years ago on his own battle with suicide. The last three years, Stay Day has been used to connect those around the community and help raise awareness in a more uplifting and positive way. Stay Day has connected over 50 different businesses over the last three years and continues to grow each year, providing t-shirts that say, “Stay, Discover What You Are Made For” to community partners and businesses to help provide that positive message.
This year for Stay Day, we will be mixing things up to accommodate those in the community who are protecting themselves from COVID-19. We will still be providing shirts to community members, but we will not have an in-person meeting.
Instead, we ask that members of our community take a short 30-second video of why they stay on their phones and send them to Justin@myhousematsu.org to create a community video leaving a positive message. If you are a business please take photos of your team and you in the shirts Friday, September 25th and post them on social media tagging the MY House page. You can find us on Facebook throughout the month of September providing information on suicide prevention and telling stories of those who have made it through the fight.
For more information or to sign-up for t-shirts, please contact Justin Pendergrass at (907) 373-4357 or by email at Justin@myhousematsu.org.