Superintendent’s Spotlight: Holly Purta and her Hopeful Hearts podcast

If you haven’t checked out Holly Purta’s Hopeful Hearts podcast, it’s time to stop by her YouTube Channel and take a listen. Her carefully curated recordings are dedicated to helping students here in Warwick Valley, and beyond, by spreading awareness about issues around mental health.

Holly, a senior at Warwick Valley High School, began developing her podcast about two years ago as part of her Girl Scouts Gold Award Project. The Gold Award program is for students in ninth through 12th grade, during which they identify an issue in their community or the world that they care deeply about and find a way to address it. Gold Award candidates must complete 80 hours of work on their project!

Originally, Holly’s plan was to create and distribute flyers about the mental health information she’d been researching. She realized that it would be hard to measure their impact, an important aspect of the Gold Award project, so changed course to produce the podcast.

“The podcast just felt right,” said Holly. “It was something that would be fun to make, while also being easy to track its impact.”

Holly’s mental health advocacy dates to eighth grade, when she launched a club called Happiness with Holly. Also related to mental health, Holly created the club for her and her peers, and as part of her Girl Scouts Silver Award.

“The club was for my friends and I, and we talked about everything that had to do with positivity,” Holly explained. “For example, I spoke about helping kids get out of their shell a little bit more, and things like learning to keep a positive attitude.”

Holly’s advocacy includes acknowledging and sharing her own experience with mental health.

“In my podcast episode on stress and anxiety, my guest was a doctor,” Holly said. “When he started talking about stress and anxiety, I related to that.”

She has found, both in producing her podcast and during Happiness with Holly gatherings, that addressing such issues with peers can be a vulnerable feeling, but that sharing them ultimately helps.

“Everyone experiences this at some point or another,” she said. “But I found it to be helpful because we made it fun, we laughed. We also talked about things that we could do to resolve them.”

Holly has released five episodes, each one focused on different aspects of mental health, from leadership, stress and anxiety to drug and alcohol prevention, and more. Each episode features an interview with someone who is an expert in their field. One episode featured WVHS Principal Georgianna Diopoulos, who was interviewed about leadership.

Holly’s mentor on her project has been WVHS Guidance Counselor, Colleen Amideneau. She has been working with Holly for the past few months and is appreciative of her passion for mental health.

“Holly truly cares and has put a lot of thought into her project,” said Ms. Amideneau. “She is thoughtful and always ten steps ahead of me. When she asked me to be her mentor, it was no-brainer.”

Holly is currently Vice President of the high school’s Mental Health Club, which gives students a safe and supportive space to discusses various mental health topics. The club puts up bulletin boards with inspirational messages for students and, during AP week, gave out treat baggies – including stress balls – to help offset any anxiety or tension they may have felt. She is also a Wildcat Ambassador, the group of students who welcome incoming freshman and their families for orientation events, as well as a member of the Executive Student Leadership Council.

And as if that weren’t enough, Holly is also in the high school’s rigorous, year-long independent study program, Senior Project. To coincide with her Gold Award project, her Senior Project is to organize a 5K walk/run to raise funds for the organization Warwick Cares and its efforts around mental health and suicide prevention. Besides organizing the race, Holly’s Senior Project will include a deeply researched paper and presentation on the effects of exercise on reducing anxiety in high school students.

“It’s going to be a glow run,” Holly said. “To glow against the stigma of mental health.”

Holly’s current podcast series will continue until June, and she hopes to do another season from college. She will be attending Keuka College in the fall to study nursing. At the end of the day, Holly hopes that not only students in her peer group, but people of any age, will find some comfort and confidence through her work.

“I hope that people can learn it’s OK to struggle with mental health,” Holly said, “especially with stress and anxiety, and that they should try to keep a positive mindset. Things will settle eventually.”