Tag: teenagers

This Young Woman Is Helping Struggling Teens by Truly Seeing Them and Caring

Posted on by robbie

At age 5, Claudia emigrated with her family from Chile to the United States, but the experience was hardly the American Dream. She lost her sister to a drug overdose and experienced PTSD from living with domestic violence. But instead of these experiences breaking her, they broke her open and helped her create a better life.
She knew she was not the only one living with trauma in her Newark, New Jersey school. So after college, she returned to help others overcome their challenges and succeed in school. She started Future Leaders Accomplishing Intellectual Readiness (FLAIRNow) to break down the walls faced by students of different backgrounds and give them the skills to start a career. 
She learned to accept the bad in the world and still see the good. Every day, she says, her students teach her how to keep turning the bad into good. 

This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.

This College Student Is a Leader in the Fight Against Teen Suicide

Posted on by NationSwell Team

Eight days before Chloe Sorensen won a Young Leader award from Young Minds Advocacy for her work as a suicide prevention advocate, she lost another friend to suicide. For Sorensen, this wasn’t anything new. Sorensen is a recent graduate of Palo Alto’s Henry M. Gunn High School, the Silicon Valley school that made headlines for a spate of suicides in 2009. During Sorensen’s sophomore year alone, four teenagers committed suicide in her school district: one Gunn alum, two current students, and one student who attended crosstown rival Palo Alto High School.

Like others in the community, Sorensen felt waves of shock after each suicide cluster. On-campus grief support helped her to process her emotions. Unfortunately, suicide clusters — defined as three or more suicides in close proximity to each other — have occurred with increasing frequency in Palo Alto, where the rate is four times the national average. But before they began happening at her school, suicide was more or less an abstract concept. “I had a few friends who dealt with mental health conditions, but never dealt with suicide,” Sorensen said. “As a 15 year old, that was a really difficult thing to process because I didn’t understand what was happening. But the way I dealt with that grief, shock and initial pain was by channeling it into something more positive.”

Initially, that meant leaning on existing relationships with family and friends to grieve, and coming up with ways to advocate for mental health at Gunn. Sorensen started the Student Wellness Committee to encourage students to be more aware of their mental health, including a referral system where her peers could refer friends anonymously for in-school counseling. Another successful initiative: Youth Empowerment Seminars, where students learn stress-relief techniques such as mindfulness and breathing exercises.

Soon enough, Sorensen found herself immersed in the mental health advocacy space at the district level, a role that she’s quick to admit “snowballed” over time. After addressing the school board about pressures outside of school that often affect a student’s mental health — and being quoted in local papers as a student advocate and leader in the community — she was approached by national media outlets like NPR and The New York Times. “It was startling, but it was also hard to sit still with the feelings,” said Sorensen. “I’d much rather go out there, do something, and try to make a difference.”

Thanks to people like Sorensen, the past few years have seen progress regarding mental health awareness. In July, Oregon became one of the first states to allow students to be absent from school for a physical or mental illness, joining Utah and Minnesota in a growing movement that tells students it’s okay to admit when they’re struggling. “It’s important for schools to acknowledge that mental health is a critical component of student well-being, [but] it also plays an enormous role in success at school,” said Patrick Gardner, president and founder of Young Minds Advocacy. “It’s a positive step to empower students to act in their own best interest, and not feel they would be penalized for staying home if they believe that’s best for them.”

Not that today’s teens have any shortage of reasons for self-care: In addition to trauma triggered by mass shootings, the current political climate and the omni-present reality of climate change, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 34. In Oregon, it is the state’s second leading cause of death in the same age group. Says Gardner: “Colleges historically haven’t been very good at addressing the mental health needs of their students, and universities typically haven’t been forthcoming in trying to sort that out.”

Gardner founded Young Minds Advocacy in 2012 while working at the National Center for Youth Law, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to helping low-income children achieve their potential. Today, Young Minds works to motivate local communities to address the number one issue facing young people and their families: unmet mental health needs.

While the group’s approach involves a blend of policy research, advocacy, impact litigation and strategic communications, one of its most important functions is providing a platform for teens to have a voice in advocating for mental health. “[Treating illness] as something only a doctor can give you a prescription for is the medical model of dealing with mental health, which has been so problematic in the United States,” Gardner said. “In Oregon, they talk about mental and behavioral health, which is a much broader concept and much more useful and actionable to children and families.”

In many states, students must be 18 to receive treatment without parental consent, which is one reason students are mobilizing to take mental health into their own hands. Though Sorensen wasn’t familiar with Young Minds Advocacy at the time, Gardner’s daughter Annabelle, communications director at Young Minds, contacted her in 2016 about receiving an award for community advocacy after learning about Sorensen’s work in the Palo Alto community.

Now a student at Stanford, Sorensen spends much of her time working with the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing on the launch of Allcove, a network of youth mental health centers in Santa Clara County geared toward youth 12 to 25 years of age. In addition to onsite mental health services, basic primary care, wellness services and the educational/career support offered at each center, young people can access a variety of support services without parental consent, including treatment for early psychosis and substance abuse counseling. Sorensen also founded Youth United for Responsible Media Representation, a group of students working to reduce suicide contagion by training the media not to sensationalize coverage in the aftermath of tragedy.

Despite all the work she’s done to raise youth awareness around mental health, Sorensen recognizes how fortunate she is to live in a community where mental health isn’t swept under the rug. She also remains humble about the awards she’s received for her work. “I almost didn’t want to go to that [Young Minds Advocacy] awards ceremony: I didn’t know anyone, and it kind of felt shitty to get an award for suicide prevention when my friend just died,” Sorensen said. “But it reaffirmed that this work is important. The role that Young Minds played in my life was to help me find my voice. They really stood behind me and elevated me at a time I needed that support.”

To learn more about how the Young Minds Advocacy group empowers youth advocates, click here.

More: Confronting Suicide With A Little Manly Humor 

When Terror Strikes at Home, Empathy Helps Teens Move Forward

Posted on by robbie

In the early morning hours of a September Tuesday, Joseph Pycior, Jr., arrived at work. Headquartered for nearly three years at what his father called “the safest place in the world” — the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. — Pycior compiled raw data into digestible tidbits for press releases.
The desk work may not have been as exhilarating as his previous position, serving as a member of the navy in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, but it gave the 39-year-old a chance to see his kids more often, taking them camping or fishing on occasion. Plus, he’d just put in his papers for retirement. He was four months from his golden years, a new job as a middle-school history teacher and a move back home to New Jersey.
Around 9:15 a.m. Pycior heard a report about a plane flying into the World Trade Center. He phoned his wife to see if she knew. Then he called his mother in Jersey and told her to look outside at the billowing smoke. Fifteen minutes later, at 9:37 a.m., another plane, a Boeing 757, slammed into the massive five-sided building, which houses the U.S. Department of Defense.
His son Robert Pycior, who goes by Robbie, was only eight years old as firefighters dug up the victims from the rubble and as news anchors confirmed that 184 people died at the Pentagon alone. For Robbie and each of the 3,050 children who lost a parent on Sept. 11, the experience of a parent’s death could feel isolating. The struggle to heal continues to single out victims of terrorism, 15 years after the attacks.
“For these teenagers, the sudden, violent and public nature of their loss becomes an overwhelming and defining characteristic of their lives,” says Terry Sears, executive director of Tuesday’s Children, a nonprofit that promotes healing for 9/11 victims. “Their experience is not something that’s easily shared with others.”
Every summer, Tuesday’s Children provides a welcoming place to share that experience in a tranquil setting. During a weeklong session, the organization’s Project COMMON BOND brings together several dozen teenagers, ages 15 to 20, at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. American teenagers affected by 9/11 wanted an international community who’d suffered similar loss inspired the program, which is now in its eighth year. Half the group of 60 are Americans who lost a parent in 9/11 or in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the remaining are international teens (from countries like France, Spain, India, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Kenya, Indonesia, Macedonia and Northern Ireland) who lost a family member to terrorism.
“The most important thing is just recognizing that the pain will be there. There will always be that hole in your heart, as the saying goes. You can fill that hole by sharing your story, by using your story to help others, by having a positive impact in somebody’s life … but it will never be completely filled,” Robbie Pycior, who returned to the camp for a second time as a counselor this year, tells NationSwell in an interview. “Twenty years from now, I still realize, ’Wait, I can’t tell my father about something’. As opposed to moving on from your loss, it’s moving on with your loss, with your loved one, with their memory.”
[ph]
Pycior, a volunteer firefighter in his hometown of East Windsor, N.J., not far from Trenton, the state capital, just graduated from college, where he majored in psychology and history. He’s going back to school this September at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., to obtain his masters in social work. Even the second time around, Project COMMON BOND was a “roller coaster” of emotions. It left him feeling “sort of exhausted,” but in a good way, “like you’ve accomplished something.” He was amazed that people from so many different cultural backgrounds — often from conflict-torn countries — could find commonality.
“People who come to COMMON BOND could have lost someone at a very young age or lost them three years ago, as a 17 year old. They have very different perspectives than someone who experienced that at three months old,” Pycior says. “It’s hard to explain other than that we get each other. There’s an unspoken understanding that we know what it’s like to be in each others’ shoes. We understand what grief is and having that with people from 12 or 13 different countries is extremely powerful.”
Project COMMON BOND isn’t just a chance to unload a heavy emotional burden. Like Seeds of Peace (a youth peacebuilding organization), the curriculum is meticulously designed — in this case, by experts from Harvard Law School’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. The model involves intensive group therapy as well as leadership training, conflict resolution and peace-building exercises.
The initiative uses the “dignity model” (designed by Donna Hicks, an associate at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs), which teaches ways to respect every person’s inborn and inalienable dignity, says Monica Meehan McNamara, the program’s curriculum director. By talking through stereotypes and preconceived judgments, the kids get closer to removing the “blinders” we have about other cultures and “building empathy for other people,” she adds. It’s a lesson whose importance seems to grow daily, as tensions deepen domestically between African-Americans and police officers and abroad with ISIS recruiting extremists across the globe.
[ph]
“The whole week people talk about the loss that they had, but they’re also thinking about what produces terrorism and violence,” Meehan McNamara says. “One young woman from France spoke about having witnessed her father, best friends and cousin being killed by terrorists in Saudi Arabia and how devastating that was. About four or five years later, [the murderers] were caught and brought to trial. People said to her, ‘Aren’t you glad about being able to get revenge? To put them away?’ Looking at [the attackers], she realized they were children once. She wondered, How did they come to this other place, this extreme? … Throughout the week, they’re offering their story about the way it impacted their family and the trauma that some still carry. They want to understand how such a thing can happen, but they also want work on the side of counteracting that.”
The afternoons, in contrast, are all centered around lighthearted, creative play, through drama, art, music or sports. It’s a chance to sublimate the morning’s raw emotion, to unwind and just be a kid. Some days, you’re playing soccer with a talented club player from Algeria who always lets someone else score or teaching foreigners ultimate frisbee; other days you’re acting silly, improvising throwing an invisible ball around a circle.
The final day at Project COMMON BOND looks like any other summer camp. Many are scribbling down email addresses and phone numbers to stay in touch. Tears dampen several eyes. “You’ve formed such a close, tight bond with people. Someone 9,000 miles away are some of your best friends,” Robbie Pycior says. He asks the instructors if he can help clean up the place afterward. He doesn’t want to go just yet. Eventually, Robbie gets into his car, counts to 10 to calm himself down and hits the road back home.
 

Why It’s Important to Hear the Haunting Tales of War

Posted on by robbie

Who better to hear tales of wartime bravery from than soldiers themselves?
That was the thinking of 17-year-old Derek Copeland. The Philadelphia native has always been interested in military history — reading books on World War II and visiting battle sites from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, as well as World War II memorials in Europe.
So when it came time for Copeland to choose a project to earn his Eagle Scout rank, military history was at the forefront of his mind. So he found one that related to it and also honored veterans at the same time.
Copeland organized volunteers to interview 17 veterans from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. Recordings of the conversations will be donated to the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
“Many my age and in my generation will not have opportunities to directly speak to these veterans and hear their stories first-hand, so I thought recordings would be a wonderful way preserve and hear them,” Copeland tells the Courier-Post. He said the vets’ stories were “moving” and “amazing.”
Copeland’s collected stories include an interview with 91-year-old John Lauriello, who was among the first Marines to land on Iwo Jima, and 64-year-old Richard Feldman, who volunteered for the military during the Vietnam War, informing families when a loved one had died overseas.
Maureen Harris, the spokeswoman of the Library of Congress, says, “We accept oral histories and receive audio and videotaped recordings from public and private donors, including Eagle Scouts, as well as original materials like letters, diaries and photographs.”
Eventually, the recordings will be archived for researchers to study.
MORE: Inspired by Homeless Veterans in His Own Family, This Boy Scout Helps Give Those in His Community a Fresh Start

How to Bridge the Digital Divide

Posted on by robbie

While many claim that devices are causing people to interact less, here’s a great example of technology bringing people together.
Once a week, 16-year-old Mikinly Sullivan travels to the Frasier Meadows retirement home in Boulder, Colo., to visit her friend, 89-year-old Kevin Bunnell. The two were connected through Cyber Seniors, a program that pairs high school volunteers with elderly individuals that need help navigating new-fangled technology.
The program wants to ensure that seniors are learning to use computers — not just letting the young people figure things out for them — so as a rule, the elder person’s fingers must be on the keyboard the whole time, while the teenager coaches them through maneuvers.
Bunnell is a poet, and Sullivan has been helping him organize the many poems he’s written over his lifetime. “I love listening to the stories from when he was young,” Sullivan says to PBS News Hour. In exchange, Bunnell wrote a poem in honor of the Cyber Seniors program.
Another senior benefitting from the program is Bruce Mackenzie. “I’m taking a class at the university called Hip-Hop 101,” he says, “And I didn’t know how to listen to the rap songs that are on hip-hop. And Ryan [a teen participant] showed me how to go to YouTube, which I never knew anything about. So I go to YouTube now and I can listen to all these rap songs for my class.”
While the program’s ultimate mission is to help seniors get online, Jack Williamson, who runs Cyber Seniors, says that it “helps build relationships between young people and seniors, which is rare in this culture today.”
As one student volunteer tells PBS News Hour, “I’m learning a lot from them and they’re learning from me. I have actually found through this that I think I like older people more than I like younger people.”
MORE: When The Elderly Need Help With Chores, This Concierge Service Does the Heavy Lifting

When Skiers Leave Behind Warm Clothing, These Teens Dole It Out to the Homeless

Posted on by robbie

There’s more than a mountain of snow at ski resorts each season, as giant piles of winter coats, mittens, hats and scarves accumulate in the lost-and-found departments.
Back in 2011, two 11-year-old ski racers from the Bay Area, Corinne Hindes and Katherine Kirsebom, noticed these mountains of unclaimed winter wear at Lake Tahoe ski resorts and decided to use them to help less fortunate people.
They didn’t stop with just donating one batch of coats to homeless shelters and other charities, however. The girls founded the nonprofit Warm Winters, and to date, the organization has donated 5,000 pieces of warm clothing to help thousands of homeless people.
Even though Hindes and Kirsebom are still only teenagers, they plan to expand Warm Winters nationally with the help of a 2013 Jefferson Award, given by a foundation that describes itself as “the country’s longest standing and most prestigious organization dedicated to activating and celebrating public service.”
As part of the award, Hindes is studying leadership with the Jefferson Awards Globe Changers Leadership Program. She aims to expand Warm Winters to 10 ski-friendly states, while keeping the program a teen-led initiative as they work with the National Ski Area Association to get it off the ground at 50 or more ski resorts.
Hindes tells TalkingGood, “There was a time a few years back where I saw a homeless man in a T-shirt and jeans on a terribly cold day in winter and I was horrified by how cold he was, and the fact that he had no jacket to shield him from the cold broke my heart. That was a moment where I gained clarity about my purpose because I knew that I had to help him and others like him in any way that I could, and I had to do all that I could to make their situation better. When I gave my first coat to a homeless person, the smile on his face gave me the most rewarding feeling I had ever felt, and it still does today.”
MORE: How Does A Professional Skier Inspire Kids Toward Academic Achievement?

5 Inventors Under 20 That Are Changing the World

Posted on by robbie

Remember that list teachers had you make in elementary school? It was filled with all of the amazing things you wanted to accomplish in your life, most of which were grandiose. And while most of us probably won’t have the opportunity to cure cancer or travel to the moon, some teenagers are already making an impact. All under 20, these kids are using their ingenuity and everyday objects to solve the world’s problems.
Eesha Khare
Just 18 years old, Khare knows more about batteries than most of us combined ever will. This Saratoga, Calif. teenager revolutionized their function by inventing one that can be charged in 20 seconds and keeps power 10 times longer than the average battery. [ph]
Param Jaggi
With carbon dioxide emissions (particularly from cars) becoming a more prevalent environmental hazard, Jaggi decided to look to the environment for a solution. The answer? Algae. Using the water weed, the 17-year-old Jaggi created Algae Mobile – a device inserted into the tailpipe of a car, which converts exhaust into oxygen. [ph]
Marion Betchel
The daughter of geologists and a music lover herself, Betchel found a way to combine her experience with both to fight violence. Using the sound waves from the piano, Betchel created a keyboard-based device that can detect hidden land mines — which, in many areas, are still a huge cause of death, particularly among children. Betchel’s device could prevent many of those unnecessary deaths. [ph]
Ryan Patterson
In Colorado, 17-year-old Patterson just found a way to ease the lives of the deaf using a glove. Equipped with sensors, a radio frequency transmitter and a microcontroller, this glove can interpret hand motions, thereby, translating sign language for the user. [ph]
Raquel Redshirt
In New Mexico’s Navajo Nation, poverty runs rampant while electricity is scarce. Many of the residents can’t afford an electric oven — making food options very limited. That is, until 16-year old Redshirt created a solar-powered one. Comprised of anything lying around — old tires, aluminum foil, shredded paper, dirt — Redshirt created a simple device that’s changing the lives of her family and community. [ph]
Considering all of these great things were accomplished during their teen years, just imagine what these youth are going to do in the next 50 years.
To read about more teenage inventors, click here.
MORE: Can Nail Polish Prevent Date Rape?

Inspired by Homeless Veterans in His Own Family, This Boy Scout Helps Give Those in His Community a Fresh Start

Posted on by robbie

The challenge facing 17-year-old Boy Scout Robert Decker: Finding a service project that benefitted his Egg Harbor Township, N.J. community.
To earn the Eagle Rank that he’s been working for years to attain, Decker decided that he wanted to make a difference in the lives of veterans struggling with homelessness.
He Tells Devin Loring of the Press of Atlantic City that he was inspired in this mission because his grandfather and several great uncles served in World War II, and some of his uncles experienced homelessness after they returned from war.
Decker contacted Jaime Kazmarck, a social worker at the Department of Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic in Northfield, N.J., to inquire about how he could help homeless soldiers. Kazmarck is a coordinator with HUD-VASH (Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing), a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the VA to help homeless veterans transition off the streets. The program provides vouchers for rent payments to veterans and supports them with case management and counseling.
Kazmarck told Decker that many of the vets who finally get a key to their own apartment have few possessions to make it feel like home.
So Decker organized a campaign encouraging people to donate practical items to outfit these vets’ apartments, including towels, toothpaste and cleaning supplies.
Decker and other members of his Boy Scout troop stood outside the Somers Point supermarket ShopRite, distributing fliers about the project and talking to people about it. Over two nights, they collected more than $1,500 worth of supplies and donations. According to Loring, Decker collected enough to fill 20 laundry baskets and 10 boxes and was able to purchase 25 $10 Wal-Mart gift cards with money donated for the vets.
“We’re really grateful for Mr. Decker and the troop for getting this together,” Kazmarck tells Loring. “They did a great job. It gives them [veterans] a wonderful start in a new apartment or home.”
Decker has submitted documentation of all his work to the Eagle Scout board of review, who will soon tell him whether he has qualified. We think it’s a safe bet that this generous and hard-working scout will be rewarded with a new rank.
MORE: Veterans Receive Donations from An Unlikely Source: A Twelve-Year-Old Girl 

Author John Green and his Nerdfighters Work for a Friendly Online Atmosphere

Posted on by robbie

The Fault in Our Stars topped the New York Times bestseller list, is a major hit in theaters, and most likely, left all of us who read or saw the gut-wrenching tale reeling in emotional turmoil.
The man behind all of this success, though, has done much more for the teenagers and the world than just filling them with dreams of Augustus Waters and uncontrollable crying.
John Green is the author of the popular young adult novel, but he is also a member of Nerdfighters — a millions strong online movement making a difference in the world.
Nerdfighters reside in an online realm called “Nerdfighteria” complete with their own language. Their mission, though simple, is powerful: they intend to fight the “world suck” with “awesome.” Armed with technology, Nerdfighters create videos and post them mainly on YouTube — covering issues such as anti-bullying as well as raising money for charities.
Through their Foundation to Decrease World Suck, the Nerdfighters arrange annual fundraisers through their Project 4 Awesome. What’s that? It’s a competition where money is raised and donated to organizations around the world that promote awesome in the world. Their motto — “DFTBA: Don’t Forget to be Awesome” — is a positive message, and one that they definitely have not forgotten.
The 2013 Project 4 Awesome took place in December over YouTube, raising an astonishing $850,000 in just two short days for multiple charities, including Doctors Without Borders, Books for Africa, Water.org and Women for Women, among others.
Nerdfighteria is not just a place to raise money; it is also a safe Internet environment for teenagers. Cyberbullying cases consistently dominate news headlines, but this group is working to combat this trend. Members are given the chance to join a nondiscriminatory group that values membership and individuality.
It all began in 2007, when John and his brother, Hank Green, started their own YouTube series called Vlogbrothers where the two brothersdiscussed all sorts of topics — although most were nerdy and geeky in some fashion. They quickly garnered a following, but only after John mistakenly called the arcade game Aero Fighters, Nerdfighters, did the name and movement take off.
How then, did the man behind Nerdfighters come to write The Fault in Our Stars? It all began with one of the initial Nerdfighters, a girl named Esther Earl. Earl was an avid YouTube video blogger, posting videos about funny topics and also her experience with thyroid cancer. She was brave and did not let cancer define her, much like Hazel Grace Lancaster in John’s book. Earl lost her battle in 2010 at the age of 16, becoming the book’s inspiration.
Green’s relationship with Earl and his other Nerdfighters show the positive change that can come through empathy and community. Everyone needs to belong, and it is time for the Internet, a tool that is supposed to connect us, to finally fulfill its purpose.
With all of Green’s positive work, we can almost forgive him for the depressing ending of his book.
MORE: This Janitor’s School Family Gifts Him Money to Visit His Family Overseas

A Selfless Teen Treats Former Service Members to a Home-cooked Meal on Father’s Day

Posted on by robbie

On Father’s Day this year, Kayla Waller, a high school senior in Shreveport Louisiana, decided to do more than simply celebrate her own father. In what an only be described as a heart-warming act, Waller showed the veterans staying at Woody’s Home for Veterans, a local Volunteers of America-run transitional home, that she considers them honorary fathers by cooking them a meal on the holiday.
“They are fathers because they are protecting us, like a father,” Waller told Craig Sims of KTBS. Waller had participated in community service projects at Woody’s Home before, and this year was inspired to come up with her own. Spending about $250 that she earned from her very first paycheck on food, Waller worked for 10 hours cooking 60 meals, which she served the veterans herself.
Charles Myrick, a veteran who stays at Woody’s Home, told Sasha Jones of KSLA that Waller’s efforts helped him “to see there are still people out there who appreciate veterans.”
Waller thinks it’s essential for young people to help others. “Think of a track race,” she told Sims, “You’re sticking the baton. You’re giving the baton to someone else. My generation is the next generation that’s coming up that’s going to be in charge.”
It sounds like Kayla Waller is doing a great job running her leg of the relay.
MORE: Minnesota Looks to a Historic Structure to Help End Veteran Homelessness