A student-led campaign encouraging the community not to text while driving has been entered into a contest to receive money to further the campaign.

Members of the public are encouraged to vote for the Lakeland High School students’ project to encourage their peers, parents and the public to stop texting while driving.

The school’s Student Council Association organized the campaign. Lakeland is the only Suffolk school that entered the contest sponsored by the National Organizations for Youth Safety and the Allstate Foundation.

For their campaign, about 50 Lakeland students organized interactive events and promoted awareness to get their peers involved and informed.

They scrawled messages in colorful chalk across the entryway to the school to remind student drivers to wait to text and park their phones before driving.

Phone-shaped signs posted in the hallways imitated texts from the Grim Reaper to those who text while driving, warning “Go ahead and finish that text, and you’ll see me next.”

SCA sponsor and history teacher Carrie Casagrande said the campaign’s aim was to make the consequences of texting while driving more real.

As part of the campaign, some students wore shirts reading “I died today” to school. Every time someone asked why they were wearing the shirts, the students would relate the story of a real person who had died in a distracted-driving accident.

To demonstrate the level of distraction texting causes, students tried to hopscotch while texting family members the message “wait to text.”

“I would say 98 percent of the kids realized that they could not do that while hopscothing, and I think it brought the message home,” Casagrande said.

Casagrande said she is pleased by the response and interest the campaign has received from the Lakeland community.

“I was very amazed at the number of students who took up the message,” she said.

Even administrators got behind the cause — Casagrande said Principal Thomas Whitley allowed students to use their own phones for the hopscotch exercise — even during the school day — because he believed in the campaign.

There are 11 prizes up for grabs in the contest. The school with the most votes will be awarded $10,000, and other top schools will receive $5,000 each.

Casagrande said she hopes Lakeland wins so the school can bring great student ideas to life. For example, juniors Summer Griffin, who led the campaign, and Jillian Bates hope to organize a Lakeland news broadcast, but the funds haven’t been available to make it happen.

“I think if we were to win this, we would be able to make it a good project at the school,” she said.

Voting is open until May 22. You can vote once a day, every day until voting closes.

To vote, visit www.actoutloud.org and click Virginia on the map. From there, click Lakeland High School to view a compilation video of the campaign and vote for the school.