South Side high school celebrates opening of student center wellness space

(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Tuesday marked the grand opening of the Youth Wellness Project's Wellness Store at Wendell Phillips Academy High School in Bronzeville.

"We also have table games, whatever they need to create friends, create bonds," said Ruby Mendenhall, a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Mendenhall helped curate the space. Students can come visit to relax, center themselves, and speak with trained student citizen scientists about mental health and wellness.

"When young people often are together, they don't talk the same way as they do when adults are in these situations," Mendenhall said.

She says the goal of the space is to remind students they have advocates all around them.

"We want this space to tell our young people that we love you, we see you, we know that there are difficult things. But you have support. And you come to this space and hopefully it says that you have support."

The idea for The Wellness Store started with two social workers at Wendell Phillips Academy High School, who wanted to create a calming space for students.

"At the same time, I received a grant from the MacArthur foundation — $500,00 — to create a community health worker training program and train them as citizen scientists, go into their community, see what's wrong, and do something about it," Mendenhall said.

She says about 50 students learned everything from disease prevention, to how to take blood pressure, to research. Now they're using that knowledge to help their peers at the Wellness Store.

"We hear a lot about the gun violence, we hear a lot about young people doing some of the shootings, but young people are also our healers. They're also our answers to that, and we have to support them in that."

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