Johnson County students find strength, hope in program

BUFFALO — In its fourth year at Clear Creek Middle School, the Sources of Strength peer leadership program has been a valuable suicide prevention tool without mentioning suicide.

The mission of the program is to create student leaders in the building with the tools to build coping skills and spot peers in need who they can connect with a trusted adult.

To a room full of Johnson County School District No. 1 trustees, staff and others, Johnson County Prevention Specialist Bill Hawley expressed the value of “upstream prevention” such as Sources of Strength in his classic style: through a story.

Imagine a village where an elderly woman walks her dog along a stream every morning, Hawley said at the school board meeting on Jan. 12. One morning, he continued, the woman is doing her usual walk, when she discovers someone shouting for help from the river, only a little ways upstream from a deadly waterfall.

“Being a leader, she jumps in,” Hawley said.

The woman brings the person to shore and saves their life, he said. To her surprise, the same thing happens the next morning, but with two people caught in the river. The village eventually realizes it needs to set up a lifeguard stand and watchtowers along the river to help spot and rescue people who have fallen in.

Then, one day the woman is on her walk, but this time she’s walking upstream, Hawley said. Several community members tried to stop her, saying they needed her right before the waterfall because of the ongoing crisis.

“And, she said, ‘I’m going upstream to see why people are falling in the river in the first place,’” Hawley said. 

“That’s Sources of Strength. … The nature of Sources of Strength is to build hope, to create help-seeking behaviors and to give young people strength, so that when the currents of life get a little difficult, they’re able to figure out a way to maybe get to the shore by themselves, or maybe have a friend or trusted adult help them get to that shore and never get to that waterfall,” he said.

At the meeting, Hawley, CCMS counselor Jen Mader and science teacher Amanda Ruby shared how the program functions and some of the successes it has brought in thus far. Adult advisers select students they identify as peer leaders in a wide array of social groups, but all kids are welcome to join and can earn their way to get Sources of Strength training by showing up to at least 75% of the meetings in a year.

Mader said that the Sources of Strength formula uses peer leaders guided by adult advisers to create campaigns in their school based on the Sources of Strength wheel. The training students can complete  teaches them about the sources of strength they can pull from: family support, positive friend mentors, healthy activities, generosity, spirituality/gratitude, physical health and mental health.

The campaign that peer leaders do can take on many forms, from posters around the building to group activities during lunch.

“The whole point is that every message has to do (with) hope, help and strength. We do not do any sad shock or trauma,” Mader said. “... It’s definitely suicide prevention, but we don’t really talk about suicide outside of the one training.”

Mader said in an interview that through the program, students focus on “belonging and connection and building individual strengths to be the best version of ourselves.”

Hawley said that the program has a demonstrable effect on students and their brain health. He cited a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine which found that peer leaders who received Sources of Strength training were four times more likely to refer a suicidal friend to an adult than an untrained peer leader.

Another study, published in the same journal in 2025, found that Sources of Strength programming reduced the overall odds of a new suicide attempt at the high school level by 29%.

Mader said she also can see the effects of the program in the building at CCMS.

“I’m seeing way more connections, relationship building between different groups,” Mader said.

Mader said that with the success and popularity of the program at CCMS and Cloud Peak Elementary School, grade-appropriate versions of the curriculum are now expanding to Meadowlark Elementary School and Kaycee School. 

The program looks very different at elementary level than it does at the middle school level, but Mader said that the curriculums help build off of each other. In the lower grades, students are taught how to connect to help, grow in their strengths and brain and body science.

“I’m just excited that we now have our elementaries all on board, because I do think proper implementation is going to be key,” Mader said at the school board meeting.

This story was published on Jan. 22, 2026.