 After losing a friend and a teammate to suicide last month, the Brainerd Boys soccer team has created a non-profit organization to bring awareness to mental health. Sarah Winkelman joins us live in the Brainerd studio with more. Sarah? Yeah, Dennis. Just days after losing their friend, these group of teenagers took it upon themselves to create positive change in Brainerd through an organization first known as Smiles for Jake, but what is now known as the Lighthouse Project. People don't look to a lighthouse when they know where they're going. They're going to look to the lighthouse when they have no idea where to turn or what to look for. The Lighthouse Project is a way to get local teens talking about mental health and more importantly provide resources. This can never happen again. We need to change how we're treating each other and why did this happen and hopefully prevent it from ever happening again. After the team, community and family members suffered a devastating loss. Just pure shock. There's no way you can really prepare for that and just you can't be ready for that. But now the teens are hoping to better prepare Brainerd and educate the community about mental health. If one of my friends is suffering depression, I don't know what to do, I don't know how to talk to him. I can look to the Lighthouse Project, go on our website, look at things and they'll tell you, hey, here's how you should bring it up. Here's what you do. With inspiration from a beloved friend and guidance from his family. We've been trying to keep really close to Jake's family just because this is where it started and we want to make sure that what we're doing, they agree with because that's our base, that's our foundation. As they reminisce old memories of their friend and teammate, I knew that this would be kind of my way to get through it because I knew that instead of kind of just sitting around and crying and like feeling sorry, I knew I could change it so that we'd never have to go through this again and that was kind of my driving factor. And even though it's a big goal, these teens are ready to make a difference. It's a big step, but it's good to be at the foundation of it. I just hope that one day when we walk down these hallways, everyone's smiling at each other. We know that we have each other's backs no matter what group you come from and what clique you come from. In order to create a brighter future for the community. Hopefully we're changing the culture and brainered and hopefully preventing this from ever happening again. Now with most of the founding members currently being juniors at brainered high school, they do have a plan in place to get younger members involved to keep the lighthouse project going in the community well after they graduate. Dennis? Alright, thank you very much Sarah for that live report from our brainered studio tonight. The group plans to get mental health screenings into the schools by the fall and they will hold their first fundraiser as a family fun night on May 4th at the Ascension Health Sports Center in Brainert. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.