Good afternoon everyone, my name is Emily Weinberg and I want to thank you all for

coming out to my senior project. During the first semester of the school year, all academy seniors

were tasked with writing a 15 page legal research paper on the topic of their choosing. I knew

immediately that I wanted to write about something to do with the mental health care field, as I

have had experience with it myself. I wrote about the mental health care crisis in prisons and jails

and how the inmates are being failed by the little amount of care being provided. I wanted to do

this poetry slam as a way to bring awareness to mental health care and mental illness and all

presenters will be presenting poems that are about mental illness, or just something they have

come across that they feel that have a connection to. While just the poetry is for a good cause, I

wanted to do something more, something to actually help out inmates, whether they have a

mental illness or not. This is where my book drive comes in. All books donated tonight and in

the past two week around my school will be donated to the inmate library at the Virginia Beach

Sheriff's office.

Now it’s time for my thank you’s. I first would like to thank Warrior’s Taphouse and Ms. Ghada

Culler for allowing me to use their venue and helping me organize this event; I truly appreciate

it. I would also like to thank all of my presenters who took time out of their busy schedules to

make this project possible. Next, thank you to all of my friends and family who came out to

support me. You all are my biggest support system and I appreciate all you do for me. Finally I

would like to thank Mrs. V and my consultant, Mr. Gary Hodges, for answering all of my

questions and helping me organize my extremely scrambled brain during my project planning.
We are now going to begin with presentations. Each presenter will introduce themselves and the

poem they are reading before the present.