Boucherie grad recognized for Humans of Boucherie

Social media is often the bane of school administrators; however, Karah Hopgood, a recent graduate of Mount Boucherie Secondary School has been recognized for creating an Instagram account that has provided a sense of community and empathy across campus.

Hopgood, the only Canadian of the 16 students recognized, travelled to Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, California, for the inaugural Digital4Good event Monday. The event brought together students, educators and industry people to raise awareness, offer real-world best practices and celebrate students using digital for good.

Digital4Good is spearheaded by ICanHelp, a non-proÀt organization that empowers students to play an active role in improving the online environment.

Hopgood launched the Humans of Boucherie Instagram account in October 2016. She was inspired by Humans of New York, a blog that features photographs, quotes and short stories collected from people on the streets of New York City.

“The whole idea was that we wanted to share the stories of the staff, the faculty and the people in our community,” said Hopgood

Hopgood noted everybody sees people every day in the school hall or around town - people they don’t know, but know of.

Humans of Boucherie aims to break down the barrier, get to know everyone and create connections.

“I love the idea that you can’t judge someone whose story you don’t know,” she said.

Hopgood put together a team of about 20 students to work on Humans of Boucherie, which has 145 posts and has attracted over 1500 followers around the world.

The team unanimously agreed to feature Steve, the school’s head custodian, in the Àrst post.

“Everyone knows Steve, everyone loves Steve, but we didn’t know his story,” said Hopgood.

The amazing response that followed saw people volunteering to be interviewed as subjects for Humans of Boucherie and others being nominated. Some only felt comfortable sharing a sentence or two about themselves while others would share incredible stories.

“High school especially can be a scary atmosphere for so many students,” said Hopgood. “If we can break down that barrier and unite the campus that would be the best.”

Raquel Steen, principal at MBSS, is proud of Hopgood’s achievement, noting Hopgood and the group working on the project did an amazing job of safely allowing students and staff to tell their stories.

Steen attended Digital4Good with Hopgood and was excited to learn what other youth are doing across North America and around the world.

With social media being a big part of many young peoples’ world, Steen said a lot of students want to do good, but they just don’t know how.

“The students have role modeled something for their peers and that’s far more powerful than any adult saying you should or shouldn’t do this,” said Steen. “Hopefully they’ve set a strong foundation for continuation of honouring diversity and uniqueness and accepting that your life may have struggles or it may have successes and it’s OK to share both of those things.”

The most recent entry on Humans of Boucherie is a reposting from student Jake Fehr, who died over the summer.

The post became a powerful outlet for the students during an incredibly traumatic situation, with comments of love and feeling for the family.

With Hopgood now attending classes at UBC Okanagan, she has passed the torch for the Humans of Boucherie to another group of Mount Boucherie students.

Hopgood admitted it was hard to leave Humans of Boucherie when she graduated.

She didn’t rule out a Humans of UBCO project in the future.

“I deÀnitely want to do something in terms of leadership to create that level of empowerment