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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) – This week’s Connecting with Community Award finalist is the last for this year’s campaign.

It partners associates from Steel Mill with kids from East Kentwood High School. The program, Youth and Business, was an opportunity for Mill Steelers to give back to their community – to meet with a teen dealing with the pressures of high school is possibly at-risk or just someone who needs support.

In a dimly lit classroom, seven kids struggling with mental-health conditions sit in a circle on the carpet.  

The discussion among the students inside the Grandville elementary classroom is focused on coping with feeling overwhelmed.  

"I went outside because I wasn't feeling good because of my anxiety and took my blanket,'' a fidgeting fifth-grade girl, struggling with social anxiety disorder and depression, told her classmates.  

Students are afraid to fill out college applications and financial-aid forms. Volunteers fear driving to school. Counselors don’t have clear answers for students whose futures in the U.S. are uncertain, and parents are afraid to seek help from the police. In school districts with a high percentage of Hispanic families, wondering what the next day will bring has become the new normal.