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Jamie Smith, tbnewswatch.com
Bridney Prout , left, and Ginnie Culver-Antoniazzi kick off their campaign Wednesday afternoon.
THUNDER BAY -- Two university students hope the first dollar they raised locally is the start of thousands from all over North America.
Ginnie Culver-Antoniazzi and Bridney Prout kicked of their Loonie Lifesaver campaign Wednesday at Lakehead University. Through the Collateral Damage project, they’re hoping to get a dollar from every student at the school so that universities can host the Safe Talk program about suicide.
“It’s not even as much as a coffee so people can spare a dollar,” Culver-Antoniazzi said.
She wanted to get involved in raising suicide awareness after local author Scott Chisholm did a safe talk at Lakehead. Culver-Antoniazzi said the issues means a lot to her after her aunt committeed suicide four years ago.
“This just runs deep,” she said.
The students are hoping to host pub nights bake sales and other campaigns to raise. They eventually want to get universities across Canada and the U.S. to start their own Loonie Lifesaver programs.
“We are hoping to get hundreds and maybe even thousands in the next few months,” Prout said.
The safe talk program is great because it will start dialogue on a topic that for a lot of people is taboo.
“A lot of us are afraid to talk about it and it’s good to get people talking,” Prout said