Youth Engagement Mastery: 7 Concepts That One of the Nation’s Leading Youth Peer Support Agencies is Using to Change the Field
Youth Engagement Mastery: 7 Concepts That One of the Nation’s Leading Youth Peer Support Agencies is Using to Change the Field
Friday, May 15, 2020
2:15 pm ET / 1:15 pm CT / 11:15 am PT
CREATE BREAKTHROUGHS—Youth Engagement Mastery is designed to help you and your agency unlock opportunities to engage young people in practical ways. Ramp up every aspect of your program by learning the cutting-edge and proven strategies Youth Era uses to maximize their real-world and digital presence. Learn how you can utilize these tools to achieve your mission and reach the next level.
Join us for this 60-minute webinar to:
- Discover 7 training concepts in two easy-to-use tools that are directly applicable to any program working to reach youth and young adults;
- Learn how to harness hype and branding to develop innovative marketing strategies; and
- Review in detail how Fortune 500 companies are using these same youth engagement strategies to achieve results.
Meet the Presenters:
Mia Prohaska, MSW, is the Program Manager for Youth Era's "Clackamas Drop," a drop-in center serving youth and young adults in Clackamas County, Oregon. Mia believes that real social work means providing the tools and strategies that allow everyone’s unique strengths to shine. Before joining the Youth Era team in 2019, Mia's notable accomplishments included helping craft HB 2940, a bill that reintroduced social workers to the Oregon education system. She also previously worked in Philadelphia, where she assisted in the creation of a curriculum to teach youth about advocacy.
Mia has lived experience working through mental health, as well as recovering from an eating disorder. In her role at Youth Era, Mia is responsible for the oversight of all Clackamas Drop programming, supervision for a team of youth peer support specialists, and county-wide outreach and advocacy efforts. Mia has increased youth attendance at her program by 68% and is proud to have reached many system-wary youth and young adults in the region. She believes that we must work to ensure all communities and voices have a seat at the table.
Mia was recently awarded the 2020 Super Heart Hero Ambassador Award for her outstanding advocacy efforts and commitment to the field of youth development. She has also garnered local and national media attention for her successes, most recently by Buzzfeed News.
Mia holds a master’s in social work from the University of Pennsylvania and is Fulbright Scholar.
Martin Rafferty is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Youth Era, a national non-profit that is revolutionizing current thinking about how we view youth engagement. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center highlighted Martin Rafferty as one of eight global changemakers. He has been awarded the "2010 Oregon Mental Health Award of Excellence", "Advocate of the Year" by the Oregon Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2013, and has been named one of the "20 Under 40 Rising Business Stars" in 2018. Most recently, Martin was awarded the "2020 Henry J. Grass MD Access Award" by the Oregon Psychiatric Physicians Association.
Perhaps his most remarkable achievement is the creation of Youth Era, which came out of the chaos of Rafferty's childhood. At the age of 12, Rafferty came home to find a note on the door from his mother that read, "this isn't your home anymore." Finding himself homeless with nowhere to go, he sheltered in a wooded area next to a freeway near his former home. This wasn't Martin's first brush with trauma - the place Rafferty had once called home was one marked by domestic violence, abuse, and neglect. Homelessness exasperated the difficulties he was already facing. By 22, his life had dramatically changed; not only had he been adopted across the country, but he launched Youth MOVE Oregon (the predecessor of Youth Era) based on his own experience accessing services as a homeless/foster youth.
Rafferty and his team at Youth Era have taken their experience nationwide to provide technical assistance and training. Youth Era has trained over 26,000 people in 24 states in the areas of peer support, positive youth development, prevention, and postvention for crises, including youth suicide and school shootings. Their experiences include providing postvention peer support in communities across the nation.