AUSTIN — Austin High School senior Katie Johnson showed a group of elementary and middle school students a white carnation in a vase of red-dyed water.
She explained that just two drops of food coloring — in this demonstration, love — turned the flower’s petals pink within hours.
“It just shows that it only takes a little bit of something for someone to change,” Johnson said Thursday.
Love was the theme of the first meeting for Stand Up, a group formed and led solely by Austin High School students that aims to educate and support children in the midst of Scott County’s recent HIV outbreak exclusively resulting from intravenous drug use.
It’s a theme that may mean more to children who come from broken homes or don’t receive needed support from parents.
“We want to show kids through love and compassion that there are other things out there in the community besides drug and alcohol abuse,” Stand Up Co-Chair Sean Eversole said.
About 12 attended the inaugural meeting at Frontline Ministries in Austin on Thursday, who were divided into groups based on their ages and tasked with love-themed crafts.
“We’re not only here to do crafts,” Johnson said. “We want to educate them on things.”
Johnson, Eversole and other Stand Up members told students not to touch needles they may see on the ground, making clear the difference between a dirty needle and grandma’s diabetes needles. One student said she heard that she could contract HIV just through hugging someone who was infected.
But the members of Stand Up have a mission even greater than education and support — they want to ensure the future of Austin.
“This isn’t a bad place,” Johnson said. “I don’t want [the students] to feel like they can’t stay here.”
She said Stand Up was first formed in her English class when her teacher asked the class how they were feeling about the HIV outbreak.
“We looked at each other and said, ‘We want to change the way this is. We want to fix it,’” Johnson said.
Despite their ages, Stand Up members said they aren’t overwhelmed with responsibility.
“I don’t feel like I’m tackling this huge issue, because we’re not doing it alone,” Johnson said.
Other community-formed organizations have popped up in the wake of the HIV outbreak, such as Take Back Scott County and Together 4 Scott County.
Frontline Ministries is just one of the churches that will host Stand Up meetings on Thursdays.
Pastor David Guernsey said he’s happy to support the group’s meetings, especially because its mission to mentor falls in line with Frontline’s mission.
“I was just overly impressed that [the high schoolers] were doing it by themselves,” he said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Indiana State Department of Health have flocked to Scott County to aid in HIV testing and provide outside resources.
“But it takes the people in the community, and that’s what’s impressing me,” Guernsey said.
Amy Ruth McIntosh brought her sons, 16-year-old Trevor and 12-year-old Konner, to Thursday’s meeting in support of Stand Up. She hopes to recruit more students to the group meetings.
“It makes me proud of them showing their leadership,” McIntosh said.
She said she’s had extensive conversations with her sons about the outbreak.
“They are aware because we do have open dialogue about everything that goes on in our community,” McIntosh said. “Basically I’m more concerned about the kids who don’t get that.”
And children may be reached in a different way from teenagers than from teachers, she said.
“I think that they don’t want to be preached to,” McIntosh said. “They’re taught at school all day long. This is more of an open dialogue.”