Article Source: The Positive Observer

The troubled teen had the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head, partially hiding his face. He stood with his shoulders slumped. His voice was quiet, muffled by his sweatshirt. At school, his teachers considered him an at-risk student and mentioned his involvement with drugs and drug deals. At home, nobody commented on his extracurricular activities – he lived alone and supported himself.

“You gave me hope,” he said from under his hood.

Sarah Branion, a presenter with Rachel’s Challenge, a worldwide school assembly program that aims to encourage compassion and understanding among young people, wasn’t sure she heard him correctly. She asked him to repeat what he said and he did.

“You gave me hope,” he said a little louder. The boy went on to tell her that he calls himself Kasper, because he feels like a ghost at school. He also told her about his depression and thoughts of suicide. Kasper described how every day, he would drive his car down to the train tracks and imagine what it would be like to drive the car in front of a train.

After hearing Branion speak about Rachel Scott, a victim of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO and her message of kindness and compassion, Kasper wanted to change. He joined a group of kids interested in forming a club to keep Rachel’s message alive at their school. He also decided he wanted to go to college and eventually become a counselor, which stunned teachers who weren’t sure he even wanted to graduate from high school.

Article Source: April Showers Movie - TPO

The April Showers Movie is launching a new campaign today in conjunction with YouTube and IndieFlix called the "I Make a Difference" campaign. They are hoping to start a movement where anyone and everyone can get involved and raise awareness as well as provide solutions to curbing school violence. Want to participate?

Here’s what you do.

Finish the sentence with regard to ending school violence:

"I make a difference by…"

Then take the following steps to get it posted on YouTube and participate in the campaign:

Article Source: The Positive Observer

When Columbine High School survivor and filmmaker Andrew Robinson wrote the script for his movie April Showers, he had no intention of actually making a movie out of it.

 “One day I called in sick to work and one day turned into a whole week, turned into two weeks,” he described. “I threw away everything I had and ended up writing April Showers in a two-week span.”   

Nearly two years later, his film will release in theaters nationwide on April 24, 2009 – just four days after the 10-year anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.  The timing seems appropriate because April Showers is about his experience during the week following the tragedy.

Robinson said his film doesn’t answer the “why” or  “how” of the shootings. "It was clear how it happened, we were there. We will never know why. What is more important is what do we do now?” The film follows the lives of a handful of survivors as they deal with issues that Robinson said weren’t addressed by the media, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, fights among friends and sensational media coverage.

The film does not focus on the gunmen and Robinson said he struggled for a long time trying to decide whether or not to include the actual shootings in the movie. Ultimately, he said he decided he had to so that the audience would understand where the survivors were coming from and what they had been through. He tried not to show the actual gunmen and said he only devoted eight minutes of the film to the actual event.

Robinson may not have been sure of why he was writing April Showers when he first sat down to write the script – but he now knows what he hopes to accomplish with it.