The purpose of the SEW (south/east/westside) Youth Led Collaborative Initiative is to promote mental health promotion/prevention in the building of resilient communities. We will do this by primarily utilizing three of the six CSAP educational, environmental, and community-based strategies in addressing:
- The impact/prevalence of increased depression, isolation, fear/grief and anxiety related to COVID-19.
- Strategies to reduce the COVID-19 effects of increased alcohol accessibility and misuse on youth and/or young adults (18-25).
By building and empowering youth led groups in Franklin County, Ohio to address the issues of alcohol misuse, mental health and suicide prevention in Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) communities and build the prevention infrastructure to address the identify needs and gaps in services. The SEW Youth Led Collaborative Initiative will build on the success of the Southside Community Collaborative (SCC/TLA) 2013 -2021, which began as result of a series of community conversations on mental health, with NAMI FC and local ADAMH Board.
Youth-Led programs provide young people a platform to effectively leverage their voices and be equipped with the skills to positively impact their surroundings. Working together with adults, youth-led programming provides communities an opportunity to invest in leadership development today and for the future. Youth led programs are incubators for leadership development on the community level.
