Author Spotlight
Phoebe Hendon
All Hands In KC, a student-organized suicide prevention and awareness fundraiser, will be hosted at Chicken N Pickle from 5-8 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 3.
Along with donations collected through the All Hands In KC website, all money earned from the event will go to foundations that provide education and awareness about mental health in an attempt to prevent teen suicide: The Harrison Rupp Foundation, Speak Up and Zero Reasons Why. 
Rockhurst senior Christian Taylor, along with his hand-picked board of 28 other seniors from schools across the Kansas City area — including Shawnee Mission East — has spent the past six months planning the event. According to the event’s website, All Hands In KC’s aim is to “bring Kansas City together to raise awareness around teenage depression and anxiety.”
Taylor is no stranger to the detrimental impact of suicide. In April of 2017, Taylor’s friend and classmate Harrison Rupp died by suicide. In early September, another member of Taylor’s friend group, Sam Serrano, lost his life to suicide as well. Not even a month after entering his senior year, Taylor had lost two close friends to suicide.
In May of 2019, Taylor had an idea — one that would eventually become All Hands In KC. After spending several months contacting local businesses for donations and assembling a student-led planning team, Taylor finally decided to go public with his project in early October, shortly after the passing of Serrano. He then immediately got to work promoting his event through social media and recruiting ambassadors from several local high schools.
All Hands In KC has already raised over $25,000 through the event’s website, Facebook and Instagram pages. Taylor’s outreach process began by contacting companies he had personal connections with.
“I crafted an email I had several people revise and I just started sending it,” Taylor said. “I’d look up a company and send it to [them].”
Taylor found their responses to be overwhelmingly positive. He was contacted by CEOs from companies like Garmin who were interested in his project and wanted to know how and where they could donate.
Taylor is proud of the community’s preliminary response to his efforts for the event. Over 500 people are expected to be in attendance and $5,000 in ticket sales alone have been raised, with several businesses slottled to donate prizes for the event’s raffle. However, Taylor wants to stress that All Hands In KC isn’t just about the money — it’s about the conversations that stem from mental health education.
He hopes the event will help deconstruct the wall between parents and kids when it comes to being open about mental health struggles.
“In a lot of situations, kids feel like they’re a burden,” Taylor said. “If all these kids are there, it will make them realize ‘wow, there are a lot of people who care about [mental health], including my parents.’”
By combining the social aspect of pickleball with education about depression and anxiety, Taylor hopes to show young people their battles don’t have to be fought independently, and he emphasizes the importance of open dialogue about mental health between parents and kids.
Taylor and his team have been meeting for several weeks to find ways to draw people to attend All Hands In KC. The event kicks off with the pickleball tournament at 5 p.m. until around 6:15 p.m., when attendees will hear from three guest speakers — therapist Emma Wood, therapist Julia Harkleroad and Megan Rupp, mother of Harrison Rupp. After the speakers finish, the pickleball tournament will finish up and winners of the raffle will be announced.
Tickets to the event are $10. Upon purchasing a ticket, guests receive a raffle ticket, with each additional raffle ticket costing $5. Prizes for the raffle range from tickets to Chiefs and Royals games to fully-paid vacations in Colorado. Putting together a pickleball team of two to participate in the tournament costs $50, or $25 per person.
Pickleball and suicide prevention may not seem like intertwined entities, but Chicken N Pickle frequently partners with charity organizations to host fundraisers.
Chicken N Pickle’s website solidifies their dedication to Kansas Citians, saying, “Our cultural imperative to our community is to give back, with many philanthropic events and service-oriented endeavors to strengthen our neighborhood and beyond.”
Taylor feels his success with the organization of All Hands In KC couldn’t have happened without Chicken N Pickle donating their space for the event — just one example of the community supporting Taylor’s mission.
Once Taylor started sharing his idea for the event with his friends, he realized his passion for mental health education resonated with several other students. According to senior Ben Walburn, one of All Hands In KC’s three representatives from Shawnee Mission East, he reached out to Taylor personally about his interest in the project.
Like Taylor, Walburn has a personal connection to the detriment of suicide, saying, “I’ve had six people I know who have either died or [died by suicide].”
Walburn is currently creating a club to promote suicide prevention at East. Both Walburn and Taylor’s experiences with the effects of suicide have led them to advocate for a shared belief: everyone deserves resources on how to deal with their mental health.
Along with showing parents and teens alike that they’re capable of tackling tough issues like depression and anxiety, Taylor hopes other teens will find inspiration in his efforts and continue the fight for suicide prevention.
“If you want to do something, and you have the motivation and the confidence, you can achieve absolutely anything you want to,” Taylor said.
Those who cannot be in attendance can still support the cause by visiting All Hands In KC’s website to give money to one or more of the three foundations the event is partnered with.
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