Treasure Valley Teen Action Team Off to a Running Start

Since starting in June, the Teen Action Team Summer Interns have quickly immersed themselves in a variety of upstream prevention projects aimed at addressing youth mental health in the Treasure Valley.

Morning meeting with the Action Team at the Communities for Youth office.

Some of the projects the Teen Action Team has engaged with so far include starting a Social Connection Toolkit (a special ask from the Communities for Youth Boise Coalition), reaching out and meeting with several local businesses and organizations about creating more youth-friendly spaces, and meeting with the Downtown Boise Association about future partnerships. As the summer progresses, the Action Team will be continuing this work and expanding into new project areas including creating a web-based youth event and activity guide, reviewing and time testing the Idaho Youth Well-being Survey, and creating media about upstream prevention topics like youth social connection, healthy sleep, media/tech use and more. This summer's Teen Action Team is made up of both middle and high school students from communities across the Treasure Valley.

Summer interns making a list of icebreaker activities they actually WANT to participate in for their Social Connection Toolkit.

Teen Action Teams are an important strategy to ensure teen's voices are incorporated into the work of our regional and emerging initiatives and goals as well as the work the overall work of Communities for Youth. Teen Action Team activities during the school year take place at schools within one of our regional initiatives.

If you are a teen or know someone who would like to get involved with school year or summer Teen Action Team activities, please sign up for our youth newsletter or contact our Youth Engagement Coordinator Heidi Jaerger (communities4youth@gmail.com).