Oak Mountain High School grad vying for Miss Alabama Volunteer 2025

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ( WIAT ) – Oak Mountain High School’s Class of 2022 Mary Elizabeth Madden is vying for the Miss Alabama Volunteer position. The pageant is a service-oriented scholarship program for women across the state of Alabama.

She joined the CBS 42 Morning News on Sunday to talk about her platform.

“Miss Alabama Volunteer really puts an emphasis on volunteerism throughout your local community and through your own service initiative,” Madden said. “And my service initiative is into the light bringing awareness to mental health as well as suicide prevention.”

Madden currently serves as the Miss Point Clear Volunteer.

“I get to represent the beautiful city of Fairhope in the state competition at the end of July,” Madden said. “It’s coming up quick and I was reached out for this opportunity, being like, hey, you want to represent this? The South Alabama and the state competition? And I was like, absolutely.”

Madden is hopeful by getting nominated for this state recognition in 2025 that she can help to eliminate some of the stigma affiliated with mental health.

“For me personally, I know mental health is a struggle for me as well as a lot of college students and preteens,” Madden said. “It’s really important to me and just silencing that, that stigma and saying that, hey, I’m just like you and we’re all human here and we all have our troubles.”

Madden said if she wins, she wants to go into school systems and get to know the kids and let them know they’re not alone. She said she’s working on her own curriculum that she wants to implement into local districts to help address mental health awareness.

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