Andrea Rouse, director of Sampson County Schools’ Project Activate, urges Rotarians to be part of the village needed to help students achieve success at school and beyond. ‘It still take a village’ to raise children, Rouse stressed, ‘but we don’t have that village any more.’ Project activate, a federally funded mental health and safety initiative, connects students and families to behavioral support services, suicide prevention training and emergency response resources. Rouse said there is a mental health crisis across the country, if not the world, and that children are definitely among its victims. ‘I do my best to make sure everybody is in a good place,’ she told the Clinton-Sampson Rotary group at its Monday noon meeting. Recalling her own rearing, including working in the tobacco fields and going to church, she stressed the village mentality that helped to raise her as so many others at the meeting. It wasn’t just a child’s mama who raised that child, she stressed, it was the neighbors, church members, everybody. ‘We need that village today. Be the person who walks up to a child and simply says how was your day? You have no idea what even that can do to make a difference in a child.’”