Amplifying Youth Voices

Educating children on the importance of caring for their mental health is crucial to their emotional well-being and quality of life. Schools for Hope is a free research based curriculum designed to equip students with the social and emotional learning tools for hope, as research suggests hope is a teachable skill.  Hopelessness is the number one symptom of depression and leading predictor to suicide, therefore the program focuses on prevention by providing multiple mental health tools and exercises.  The site provides additional depression resources for educators and families.

Attending college can be difficult, but lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning students may have an even harder time than others. The following guide was created to help LGBTQ students understand how many campuses are helping to make the college experience more welcoming and supportive.

Finding a drug rehab center is a complex and emotional process.Beginning one's recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction to a place of sobriety, a place of physical well-being, and a place of emotional freedom from drugs is a true challenge. Our aim at AllTreatment is to educate, inform, and guide our users through their own recovery or the recovery of a loved one. We suggest you begin your search for a drug rehab center by selecting the state you live in below. Browse through our comprehensive directory of drug treatment centers.

The New York City Mentoring Children Collaboration (NYC MCC) was created to leverage resources to provide mentoring to children of incarcerated parents. NYC MCC is New York City-based, with four collaborating organizations serving of all the boroughs of NYC.Our collaboration was created with the funding support from The New York Community Trust to provide mentoring programs that tailor the needs of our children to the individual neighborhoods in which they live. We work to demonstrate the positive outcomes of mentoring, reduce the stigma associated with having a parent incarcerated, and raise awareness of the impact of incarceration on children.

This resource is a complete guide to the withdrawal symptoms of alcohol and drugs.

This report identifies forces driving early sexualization of girls, from media and marketing to biological and social factors. It describes community-based efforts to combat the phenomenon, including parental education, sex education, adventure and girls empowerment groups, media education and advocacy campaigns. It also examines theoretical underpinnings of these approaches and what evaluations have shown about their effectiveness. What Are We Doing to Girls? establishes the need for a social consensus about issues at stake; ways to identify girls most likely to be harmed by early sexualization; and the development of coherent responses that can work to reduce that harm

In 2010, New England Network for Child, Youth &  Family Services (NEN) administered an online survey to young people ages of 14 and 21. This report summarizes the findings about the people, places  and activities that young people found helpful or encouraging in their communities; the people, places or activities that troubled or upset them; and what they thought their communities could do to  improve life for them and their peers.

WorkReady Philadelphia is a system of programs supported by public, private, and foundation investments helping more than 10,000 young people annually through high-quality programs that incorporate work experience, skill development, and career and college exposure.

Whatever It Takes seeks to ensure that every child in Athens-Clarke County will graduate from a post-secondary education. We, along with our partners, will accomplish this through emphasizing early intervention, recognizing that parents are a child's first and most important teachers, focusing resources in a limited geographic area, identifying and training neighborhood leaders, setting high expectations for all children, creating a culture of success, and using data to direct to policy.

Newspaper on youth work.  

This Introductory Packet provides readings and related activities on support for transitions to address barriers to student learning covering both research and best practices. It explores why transitions are dangerous opportunities that can disrupt or promote development. Key transitions and related intervention strategies are presented for starting school; daily transitions including before and after school as well as recess and lunch; year transitions such as beginning a new school year; moving to a new school/new country; transitions for special needs students; and transitions from high school

The Ready by 21 Comprehensive Solution bundles all of these supports and services into a complete package for communities whose leaders have decided to work together to create a leadership improvement plan to ensure their efforts can be implemented effectively. Our technical partners join forces to ensure that leaders have access to the full range of services needed to meet capacity standards.

This Young Adult Program hopes to engage and empower young adults in their journey toward recovery through individualized, developmentally appropriate service ans upports designed to achieve members' maximum capacity for independence as they transition to adulthood. Thresholds' Young Adult Program utilizes the innovative Transition to Independence (TIP) System, which provides the framework that drives staff interactions with young adults, program services and activities.

Global Youth Justice resources support local communities to reduce juvenile crime through programs utilizing positive peer pressure which can be harnessed and redirected to become a positive force and lead other youth to adhere to the rule of law and become more productive citizens.   These "youth court" and "teen court" voluntary diversion programs harness positive peer pressure and utilize it in a peer judgment setting to help address the anti-social and delinquent behavior of youth.  National Training Institutes, free publications and resources, technical assistance and a wide range of efforts support this OJJDP funded Global Youth Justice Website and more.

The Special Needs Resource Directory, created by the Center for Infants and Children with Special Needs at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, is a comprehensive accumulation of resources for families of CYSHCN.  Parents, caregivers and health care providers can find local, regional and national web site links to:        * Locate information on specific disabilities      * Identify strategies to help you advocate for your child      * Develop community connections for ongoing support      * Overcome barriers to access health care resources  

A magazine published by Youth Communications, Represent is written by and for young people in the foster care system. Through personal narratives and reported stories, the magazine's teen staff provides an inside look at life in the system giving other teens in care the opportunity to connect with their peers' stories.

This publication from the Casey-CSSP Alliance for Racial Equity in Child Welfare highlights the work of ten jurisdictions that are committed to reducing racial disproportionality and disparity in their child welfare systems. The report documents strategies, activities, and trends emerging in the cities, states, and counties represented. While there are unique aspects to each jurisdiction's work, there are also several common themes, which suggests a trajectory for how child welfare agencies are choosing to address the issue of racial equity. 

SaySo,Inc. (Strong Able Youth Speaking Out) is a youth driven advocacy organization for youth ages 14-24 who are or have been in substitute care. This includes foster care, kinship care, group homes, mental health placements and others. The mission of SaySo is to work to improve the substitute care system by educating the community, speaking out about needed changes, and providing support to youth who are or have been in substitute care. The website provides information, resources and tools to help youth who are in transition.  It provides support and is a central location for young people to go online.  

In this  hour solution-oriented video from the Emmy award winning PBS series, In the Mix, Miss America Erika Harold and teens share their compelling stories about being bullied. It highlights Project Change where HS peer educators work with MS students to produce PSAs showing what bystanders can do when they see someone being bullied. Everyone involved gains awareness about the various forms of bullying and changes their own attitude and behavior. Another segment focuses on cyberbullying, with expert advice on how to deal with online harassment. For grades 6-12, with companion discussion guide and website. Also with Spanish subtitles.

One Million Acts Of Kindness is a grassroots mission which teaches students the importance of having an individual ,lifetime goal of kindness. Each child performing and wanting kindness for everyone they interact with every day of their lives. One Million Acts Of Kindness Week is an annual event which is always begins the second Monday in February for 7 days. One Million Acts Of Kindness Certificates are on the homepage of the website. They are an inspiration for every child to remind them that they have taken a lifetime pledge of kindness.

This article discusses the effect that various types of trauma can have on youth and why identifying and treating traumatized youth is so important. The article points out current problems with how our health and justice systems interact with traumatized youth and offers recommendations for moving forward.

Middle- and high-school students stand to benefit from strong after-school and other out-of-school time (OST) programs.  However, it is much tougher to recruit older than younger youth and make sure they participate in OST activities regularly. This study looks at almost 200 programs serving mostly disadvantaged young people in six cities that are building systems of out-of-school time programs.   The researchers find that high retention programs have five key characteristics. Among them: providing leadership opportunities to the students and having staff members who stay informed about students' lives outside of programs.

The Agency Readiness Index is a tool designed to help service-providing agencies gauge their capacity to provide services for LGBTI individuals, including youth. The assessment asks participants (who may include staff, board members, clients and volunteers) to score their agency on a series of questions by selecting the rating that best describes the agency's current status or performance.

With a specific focus on the need for high school reform, there is a growing movement for revisiting multiple pathway approaches in preparing 21st century students for college, career and civic participation. Saunders and Chrisman argue this is based on the fundamental insight that career and technical education  previously called vocational education  can be academically rigorous.The following excerpt from their writings on the topic illustrates their argument.

Every state in the USA has a Cooperative Extension that is part of their Land Grant College and USDA. It has a wide variety of information and programs available, and is different in every state. 4-H started in 1902 and has been going strong ever since.

This resource is based on research on pre-teens' coping challenges during the critical transition period from elementary to middle school. A national group of educators, emotional health and teacher education experts helped to create an open-access, "virtual classroom" where 9-12 yr. olds learn about brain and behavior changes during early adolescence. This nonprofit, free resource is based on research with over 700 students in elementary grades 4-6. The resulting website launched in early 2008 has been utilized by nearly 90,000 visitors including pre-teens, teenagers, their parents, educators and counselors throughout the world and from every state in the U.S.

ACT for Youth helps communities create the condiditons for young people to lead healthy and fulfilling lives. At the forefront of the initiative are 12 NY state communities that work to put the principles of positive youth development into practice.

The purpose of this report is to highlight a growing segment of the population who are arriving at young adulthood disconnected from the main pathways leading to economic independence. 

The project was created through Adobe Youth Voices for the U.S. Department of Education. ED visited nine major cities to do a National Youth Listening Tour and used this video in San Francisco and Oakland. The song is about what can families, schools, and communities do to help youth success in school. 2020 Vision was created to support President Obama's initiative of having the most college graduates by the year 2020. The project was a collaboration between SF AYV sites, Oakland Peapod AYV, and Redwood City Peapod AYV.