A team of students, teachers and community leaders are forming a summit to give students the tools and support to create social changes within their schools.

The three-day Truth Empowerment Summit will be held at Longwood University and Moton Museum from July 9-11.

The program will have 10 students from each county’s middle school and 10 students from each county’s high schools—100 altogether—in addition to their school counselors. Students will be rising seventh through 11th-graders.

There will also be between 15-20 college student leaders from Longwood University and Hampden-Sydney College working with the students.

Jenny McIntosh, who is organizing the summit, is a motivational speaker who founded the student-empowerment organization MyTruthBomb, and a pastor at New Life Church in Farmville. She and her daughter, Savannah McIntosh Huddleston, are partnering with five school systems in Cumberland, Amelia, Prince Edward, Charlotte and Buckingham counties for the event.

During the summit, students and leaders will discuss removing labels, learning resiliency and communications skills, exploring the impact of their words on themselves and others, having and recognizing healthy friendships, and evaluating their interactions with social media.

“By the end of the third day, we will have a game plan that the students and the counselors will come up with on how to shift the culture for the year,” McIntosh said.

She said the activities will give students concrete ways to create a positive and loving environment around them, countering a culture where the people who act violently and demeaning toward others often have the loudest voice, or the most influence.

McIntosh described a school like a greenhouse, with a cactus being a bully. If the culture of the school shifts, the plants that are offering fruit and flowers will blossom, rather than the cactus.

“The biggest thing in the school will no longer be the cactus, but it will be of the healthy plant bearing fruit and giving life,” McIntosh said. “Instead of focusing on and letting the bullies get stronger and more voice, it’s giving voice to those that are actually giving life and health to the school.”

She noted the intentionality of having the summit take place at the Moton Museum, where Barbara Johns, with hundreds of students who protested racial and educational injustice, refused to back down when faced with violent people and beliefs.

“We particularly wanted to do it at Moton because Moton is where students shifted the entire nation,” McIntosh said. “When they saw that there was a problem, when they saw that there was social injustice, Moton was a pivot point to shift the nation. So I believe that these students need to see themselves as (people who) are really able to create such a lasting legacy of change, even in middle school and high school.”

Dr. Amy Griffin, superintendent of Cumberland County Public Schools, said she was excited about the program, and the numerous benefits it would have for students, faculty and the wider community.

“I am excited about the Truth Empowerment Summit that our middle and high school students will be engaged in this summer,” Griffin said. “Jenny, Savannah, and their team have an amazing way of lifting people up with positive messages and exposing the wonderful truths about ourselves. Empowering our students to create a culture of encouragement and kindness from their level is a refreshing way to combat bullying and will assist us in having a safe and kind learning environment within and outside of our schools.”

McIntosh started the MyTruthBomb program after the severe bullying her daughter, Savannah Huddleston, experienced while attending high school in Florida.

“I was greatly inspired by her positive attitude despite the odds that she faced,” McIntosh said on the MyTruthBomb website. “Even though she was taunted and mocked ceaselessly, she remained positive and kind. It filled me with compassion for the students facing tough situations and gave me empathy for bullies. I decided to become a voice that challenged the status quo.”

Savannah, in a March interview, noted that today’s students are facing a lot. They are grappling with everything from school shootings to bullying that takes verbal, physical and cyber forms. She said the goal is to show students who were bullied like her that they are not alone.

“We’ve just noticed that it’s been really important that these schools and these students know that there is hope, and that they know that it doesn’t have to be like this,” she said.

There have been eight school shootings in the United States in 2018 so far, including two shootings at Great Mills High School in Maryland and Sante Fe High School in Texas that took place since the March interview. Savannah said in light of what students today are experiencing, she believes she and her mother, with area educators, can provide students with the support they need to make their voices heard.

The summit, and MyTruthBomb, while focused in the five counties, could potentially become a movement that spreads beyond Central Virginia.

McIntosh has, for the past year, spoken at schools in Cumberland County, Prince Edward County and Charlotte County, in addition to schools in Lynchburg.

She said she and Savannah are currently working on a book about Savannah’s experiences, and will potentially take on a project with several educators and an author about the Truth Summit and how it could help students. The project would potentially include a book, workbooks and DVDs. The projects are being eyed by a major publisher, but McIntosh said she couldn’t disclose any additional information beyond that.

McIntosh said following the summit and after the start of the new school year, she will revisit the schools and check in with the students and counselors to help them with the goals they set during the summit. McIntosh will then host an assembly for the whole school. She estimates that she will hold assemblies at 20 area schools during the next school year.

“This is an ongoing thing that we’re going to be helping with them, and getting with the counselors throughout the year to help them, to basically give them more support,” McIntosh said. “Because the teachers, and the superintendents, are doing a great job, what they need from us is for us to come alongside them and help them. This is not an answer that can come just from the schools. We have to come in and help them, and be their biggest supporters and really help shift this nation, and it’s going to start with us.”

McIntosh described the summit, and the assemblies going forward, as something that she and Huddleston are in a unique position to do. More so, that they have an obligation to do.

“We believe we have to go forward and build something great and help them,” McIntosh said. “There’s no other choice. We have to. It’s not the season for us to sit back, and point fingers, this is the season for us to go forward and encourage, and enable and help and empower our students.”

To learn more about MyTruthBomb, visit MyTruthBomb.com.