Grace Rall ‘25
On January 26, EA hosted SpeakUp!, a local organization partnered with 35 schools that aims to help students and their families connect and engage in student-oriented discussions about problems regarding mental health, race, identity, and stress. In a community of diverse students who are often faced with similar challenges, this conference provided a welcoming environment for students to facilitate conversation with family that may not happen otherwise.
Upon arrival, students were separated from their parents in order to encourage continued conversation in a peer-group environment. Ayinde Tate, Director of Diversity and Inclusion, and Erica Snowden, Executive Director of the Office of DEI, were in charge of organizing and facilitating this opening SpeakUp! session. However, student leaders chose the discussion topics in order to encourage more personalized and student-oriented conversations. Snowden explains that the goal of this event was to “make these topics catalysts for people to have conversations” in addition to strengthening students’ voices. Snowden hopes that SpeakUp! will encourage students and parents “to hear the perspectives of other people… and to try to be in somebody else’s shoes which is all about empathy.”
The program originated when Bob Gillin Jr., who was struggling with his mental health, lost his life to AIDS in 1992. After his passing, his family was inspired by his vulnerability and realized that important conversations about mental health were absent from their community. Afterwards, they founded SpeakUp! to create events with empathetic environments that provide a space where families can discuss personal topics.
Tate believes that the program allows “people to start having these conversations and to share their perspective and hopefully, build confidence for them to be able to share that outside of just this realm.”
Eustace Mita ‘26 shares his experience at SpeakUp!, stating, “It was really inviting to be able to share your experiences, and everyone was very open to what you had to say.” Hailey Deng, ‘25 agrees with Mita’s statement, asserting that “being able to have this kind of conversation was a very valuable and enlightening experience.”
Students, parents, caregivers, and teachers are combined into several rooms which promotes an intergenerational mix of perspectives. Tate expects that splitting up students and their parents allows them to “actually express [themselves] and share [their] perspectives and opinions and hopefully that will build up the courage to have these kinds of conversations outside of the space as well.”
Due to SpeakUp!’s remarkable success this year, Tate and Snowden hope to make it an annual event that will help students for years to come. In addition to EA hosting this event for the first time, schools throughout the area such as Malvern Prep, Agnes Irwin, Radnor, and more have partnered with SpeakUp! to host similar events. Blen Ashenafi ‘25, IV Form DEI representative, shares that SpeakUp! has great “opportunities for students to get out there and express their opinions on different topics… this event is important to the EA student body because it allows students and parents to engage in honest conversations without having to be in the same room.”
Photo courtesy of EA Communications