In the October, 2024 Readers Digest, Provo, Utah is featured as one of the nicest places in America. In this article it features students, teachers, and counselors from Timpview High School. This article shows many instances when Provo has been kind and welcoming to people outside Utah and within its community. These stories show how Provo is one of the nicest places in America.

First the article shares a really cool story about a fellow Timpview student, Blanco Parra. When Blanco was 12 she left her home in Columbia and moved to Provo, Utah. When they moved to Provo it was a really hard transition. They didn’t speak a lot of English, they were immigrants, and they believed in Catholicism where most in Provo believed in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Blanco quickly learned and felt the love from the city. She shares that she never knew any of her neighbors in Columbia and they never talked much. But she found the people around her home were very kind and she knew they would help her.

Provo is a really nice and loving place, but it also has a bit of a dark side to it. Around the late 1990s suicide rates were were rising speedily. Between 1998 and 2003 the Provo City School District had 1-2 suicides every year. Some say that the stress of living in an area with the majority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints community. It was later discovered that this was not the case at all. They found out a lot of the problem was people were not being seen. They thought they didn’t have a purpose and people didn’t care for them. The people had to find a solution to this problem. This is when Greg Hudnall who was the associate superintendent sat down with students who had attempted suicide. He shared that the problem was people felt alone, isolated. Hudnall wanted to find a way to combat this problem.

He then came up with the solution to get all the most popular students and and train them for suicidal prevention. This group expanded more and more over time. Eventually this group called themselves the “Hope Squad”. The Hope Squad is one of the most if not the most successful clubs from Timpview High School. It has been 20 years since it was created and not a single Timpview student has taken their life since it was created. It has even become so big that all 19 districts have taken on the Hope Squad and even gotten funding from the Utah legislature.

The purpose of Hope Squad now is to make people feel like they have friends and school is a safe and comfortable place to be. They are doing an amazing job and they have helped so many students through hard times in their lives. “Momi Tu’ua, 57, Timpview’s current principal, estimates that in her school alone, there have been about 100 referrals made by Hope Squad members over the years.” Hope Squad has made a huge impact on so many students and it will continue to have a huge impact on students around the United States.