Lauren Hannani staff writer
Since forming into a club this semester, the Bianca Foundation gives students a chance to talk to their peers about topics that most teenagers can relate to, such as parent stress and peer pressure.
The club branches out from the larger Bianca Foundation, which is located in Los Angeles. Its main goal is to educate teens about how to communicate better with their parents and classmates, and how to put themselves in happy and healthy situations.
“The Bianca Foundation is something you can join with a bunch of teens and not only relate to what you’ve been through with them, but also learn how to avoid certain situations that you go through, such as making good friends as opposed to bad friends that have a bad influence on you,” sophomore vice president Rachel Khorshad said. “It’s about how to make the right decisions and avoid negative milestones in your life.”
With the help of a specialist who speaks at every club meeting, the club encourages students to come together and connect with one another about situations that might be bothering them.
“The speaker gives really great advice, and I think not just me, but everyone experiences that ‘uh-huh’ moment where they feel connected as a group,” sophomore president Lauren Roshan-Kashani. “Although we just started the beginning of this semester, I feel like we have a really great group of people and we’re all really supportive of one another. It’s one of those clubs where you can see it’s slowly starting to form a family.”
For the students organizing these meetings, the club is more than just an hour of talking and support every other week.
“My favorite part is having it come to life because, although it might not seem like it, there’s a lot of work that goes into just getting the speaker, and getting the form approved and the creativity behind it. I think being able to see the success in it each meeting and seeing the number of people increase every other week is just really cool,” Khorshad said.
The members of the club have also found these discussions to be useful in their personal lives outside of school.
“It’s really nice. They’ve been very open and we’ve been able to just talk and talk about what’s going on in our lives,” sophomore Andrew Mokhtarzadeh said. “It’s taught me some new tricks and things I can use in my daily life, like talking to my parents and family.”
Two meetings ago, the speaker, Elenor Daneshvar, came in to talk about the stress that parents can sometimes cause and how to deal with situations like that, which proved to be helpful for some students later on.
“I feel now that the issues I’m going through are really normal. I thought my mom pressuring me to go to college and doing good on my tests was something I just went through, but to hear other kids be like, ‘Oh, I can’t do this because my mom said so,’ and to hear it and actually see kids who’ve gone through the same thing is really self-assuring,” Khorshad said.
“We put so much effort into it behind the scenes and really seeing it come together and seeing that we basically put something together that’s going to last a long time feels like we’ve accomplished something and we’re successful,” Roshan-Kashani said.
The students behind the club are all very grateful to see their dedication and hard work pay off during each meeting. The Bianca Foundation club  meets every other Wednesday at Room S211, and goes hiking on Sundays every week at Temescal Canyon.