DETROIT — Oxford High graduate Zoe Touray climbed through the window of her fifth-hour classroom on Nov. 30, 2021, to escape a gunman carrying out an attack inside Oxford High School.
Touray felt helpless and afraid during that moment, and she does not want other victims of gun violence to carry those feelings forward as they rebuild their lives as survivors of mass school shootings.
So last month, the 18-year-old Oxford High graduate launched her own initiative — Survivors Embracing Each Other — to support survivors of gun violence across the nation. She's hosting her first event this Saturday: a special day for survivors of the Robb Elementary School shooting which killed 19 children and two adults in May in Uvalde, Texas.
She'll be joined by a group of Oxford high seniors who started a foundation, The Oxford Legacy, earlier this year to give Uvalde students the same love and support that Oxford students have been given after the attack.
The two groups connected, and on Friday both Touray and student members of Oxford Legacy foundation are headed to Uvalde to volunteer at Survivors United Playday.
"We all came together in our tragedy. I've been up to the high school and saw friends I left behind. They look up to me and wanted to come on this trip with me," Touray said.
The Saturday event at the Sergeant DeLeon Civic Center from 3-8 p.m. is for Uvalde survivors and their families with pop-up projects and events for young people and the community.
Planned activities include tie-dye shirts, indoor and outdoor games, Therapy Animals of San Antonio and Uvalde PAWS for Service. Little Caesar's Love Kitchen, a mobile pizza shop inside a retrofitted semi-truck, will be onsite providing concessions.
The Oxford students, who are in the school's International Baccalaureate program and formed their group the day after the Uvalde shooting, made hundreds of blankets for survivors with materials donated by JoAnn Fabrics. They are bringing water bottles, fidgets, bags, bracelets and other items for the children.
Oxford Legacy members began reaching out to corporations this past summer to request donations and formed an internal school account to collect financial donations, hoping to make a difference for the victims. Students raised more than $4,000 to help fund the trip to Uvalde. American Airlines donated round-trip flights to 16 seniors and their teachers, who will join Touray this weekend.
"Zoe Touray posted an event she was hosting in Uvalde," Oxford IB teacher Nicole Barnett said. "We touched base and she was so welcoming to bring us on board. We joined forces and are pushing through to make this a wonderful event for the Robb Elementary survivors and a healing experience for all of us."
Barnett, who is leading the student group to Texas, said the IB students said they knew the sights, sounds, fear, grief and trauma the children at Robb felt. They also knew healing from the trauma of the event would an ongoing process, and they wanted to give back the love they had been given when their school was attacked, Barnett said.
"Pain recognizes pain, and we want to help along the same path of healing we have traveled," the students wrote in a description of their foundation.
Zoe Touray survived the Nov. 2021 Oxford High School shooting. She said activism on behalf of other school shooting survivors has helped her heal.
Touray, a 2022 Oxford High School graduate who starts her freshman year at North Carolina A&T University in January, is collaborating with youth mental health experts, education professionals, advocates and parents of survivors to make sure her program offers meaningful, healthy encounters and encourages life-long relationships.
After the attack last year, Touray says life felt bleak for a while. But she found something to give her focus: She became a national spokesperson for March for Our Lives.
"We leaned on each other for a while. My parents were helpful. For me to get into advocacy (work), that did it. It gave me something to look forward to. So I can speak on it, so it wouldn't happen to the next kids and help my school heal," Touray said.
"I have met so many amazing survivors," she said. "They completely understand you and don't judge you and don't give you sympathy.
"As a survivor, people, your family, will look at you with sympathy, and that is the only thing that defines me as being a part of this tragic event," she said. "Other survivors don't do that. They come with a shared experience."
———
