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With Help Comes Hope: Meeting Mental Health Needs and Services of Hmong Youth in Butte County is organized by members of the Transitional Age Youth (TAY) Action Team (TAT) from the Hmong Cultural Center in collaboration with The California Youth Empowerment Network (CAYEN). This TAY Action Team is based out of Butte County and this Town Hall event is dedicated to creating discussions and conversations around establishing a TAY Mentorship Program for Hmong youth attending the local high schools in Butte County. In bringing awareness about mental health issues and services to the Hmong youth community in Butte County, the mentorship program will share resources as well as provide a safe space for youth to discuss and share personal stories about mental health. In addition, this program would also provide youth the space to discover and strengthen their identities, obtain resources for higher education, and to explore and challenge social norms and systematic oppression existing in the local, underserved Hmong community. To further our conversation about this advocacy effort, we have also invited local decision-makers and youth from our community to share their take on this work. We invite you to join us in these youth-led discussions and performances.

View Town Hall by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx_r1g2R6eY

CAYEN’s TAY Action Team with the Mental Health Association of San Francisco (MHASF) is currently working on a statewide initiative to have transitional age youth (TAY) voices heard at all levels. As energized young adults that are looking to establish a centralized youth-specific wellness center for the city and county of San Francisco, our desire for a youth-specific wellness center was inspired through our initial team project of identifying youth needs that were not currently being met. A similar commonality that all our projects encapsulated was the lack of youth-specific resources in San Francisco, when there are resources, accessibility to them is limited, and when there is support for a youth wellness center, they are usually through schools and therefore plagued with various parameters while not establishing a safe and true space for youth. We would like to create a space for youth by youth, as we have been challenged finding spaces to establish our autonomy and identity within our city and county of San Francisco. This wellness center would be targeted for youth, between the ages of 15 to 26 years of age. By developing a sanctioned place for youth, our team aims to provide a safe space when you are not at work or school, educational opportunities on community resources, workforce development support, and general harm-reduction focused techniques to add to your wellness toolboxes.