#CoronaCant - Boca High Brings Positivity Admist the Pandemic
Luke Lynch was part of the IWS family throughout high school. While he was at Boca Raton High School he founded the TREE Club to get students involved with environmental reform. They partnered on monthly cleanups with us and wee a vital part of keeping our local beaches and ocean clean. Luke graduated last year, and now attends American University, but his heart for impacting his hometown of Boca Raton has not changed.
College Student, Luke Lynch
Recently Luke began another project to positively impact the community as we deal with a global pandemic. He teamed up with his old Boca High teacher Jordan Hernandez to bring hope to students of his Alma Mater called the #CoronaCant Movement.
Boca High Teacher, Jordan Hernandez
Boca Mag recently interviewed both Luke and Mr. Hernandez:
“We initially thought of the idea [in late March,]” Lynch told us. “Jordan and I initially put our heads together and thought of the idea and got a few students involved from a couple of the clubs on campus, and then we created our first #CoronaCant video, which is a compilation of students expressing that coronavirus can’t stop them from growing and staying connected during this time.”“Luke and I were receiving a lot of messages from parents and students who were feeling disconnected, who were feeling out of sorts,” Hernandez added. “I had one particular student who is very engaged and social who said he went into a severe funk, and so Luke and I were like ‘man, we really need to do something here. Let’s do some interactive stuff.’
“Our goal is to have people in our community, in our own backyard in Boca Raton, feel connected and engaged and empowered during the strange season that we’re in. The goal is to have as many people feel connected and engaged and empowered as possible and to spread the word. It’s a ripple effect.”
“The City of Boca reposted our promo video, kinda emphasizing to the community at large what the students of Boca Raton are doing, that they’re not letting this stop them,” Lynch shared. “That happened last week, and now the movement is picking up more traction, and engaging students not just at the Boca High level, where it initially started, but it’s extending itself to Spanish River and to a few other areas in our county. Not to mention our city council members, such as Councilwoman Andrea O’Rourke, who’s been a proud supporter and is really helping to spread awareness through the local government.
“The movement is starting very strong at home, and now we’re having people understand this movement from afar, which is to say ‘Corona Can’t stop me from being who I want to be in this time.’ We want people to take advantage of that and provide them with a mentality that they can take and run with for themselves.”
“The seniors especially are starting to feel empowered,” Lynch says. “Notably, our Mr. and Ms. Boca High are going be leading this Boca High engagement through our online forum, through the #CoronaCant banner, as a way to instill that [their] senior year is not over, [their] junior year is not over. If you can tune into our message and believe in what we’re saying, even from afar, you can still feel it and laugh and really feel a sense of shared Bobcat commonality.”
“It started at Boca High, and now it’s at Spanish River, and we have a few other schools who have reached out that are doing videos,” Hernandez said. “I had a school from Seattle that follows one of our club accounts, and they said they would do the #CoronaCant video. They’re working on it. So we’re just getting everything in order right now in Boca Raton and in Palm Beach. I think soon enough, within a week or so maybe, you’re gonna start seeing videos from all over. We want to make it entertaining, we want to make it meaningful, and we want to allow students and schools wherever they are, whether they’re in Boca or in Brazil or Canada, we want them to be able to see this and join in the movement from their own community.”
To get involved with the #CoronaCant movement, visit the website and social media accounts linked below: