COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State head football coach Ryan Day and his wife, Christina, presented a $1,000 gift card to a north Columbus elementary school on Friday as part of a national effort to provide mental health resources to students.
Clinton Elementary School received the Big Lots gift card on behalf of On Our Sleeves, a movement focused on building awareness around mental health in children.
The effort was created by Nationwide Children’s Hospital in an attempt to break stigma’s surrounding children’s mental health. The ultimate goal? To provide one million classrooms nationwide with proper mental health resources by World Mental Health Day on Oct. 10.
Students and staff at Clinton Elementary were just as surprised by the donation as they were to see it presented by Ohio State’s head football coach.
“I think it’s two-fold,” Day said on Friday. “One, I think the initial motivation was our family has been impacted by mental health and then, two, just seeing what’s going on in our community even at Ohio State and just across the country coming off of COVID and mental health and some of the manifestations of mental health and people have struggled with that.”
School leaders said they plan to use the money for literature resources in classrooms and special items for the school’s Multiple Disability Unit.