Youth-Led Panel on Social Connection
Positive Relationships | Dana Anderson of Valo, Meg O’Neill of Valo, Bodhe Peirce of Falmouth High, Rendle Fertig of Casco Bay High, Emma Shannon of Yarmouth High, Phoebe Williamson of Freeport High & Active Minds, Freeport Chapter

Join Valo teens for this youth-led panel on what they think it takes to foster meaningful relationships. Valo is a retreat-based program for youth that supports their wellbeing in an unplugged setting with a circle of peers and trusted adults. Walk away with insights on what makes it easier for teens to choose vulnerability in order to deepen and strengthen their social bonds and foster greater social connection with their peers and caring adults. Listen to learn from youth on what role caring adults can play.

You’ll benefit from this panel if you:
• Want to create stronger social bonds, reduce isolation, and increase social connection for the teens in your life
• Are curious about what youth say they need in order to connect with you and one another

In this panel, you can expect to
• Listen to learn from teen perspectives
• Engage in large and small group conversations
• walk away with insights as to how teens are thinking and feeling about social connection today

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Zining Our Communities Together: The Power of Positive Connections
Positive Relationships | Cassie Cooper of OUTMaine

Are you looking to tap into and deepen positive relationships for lgbtq+ youth in your network? Do you want to dream up and map out grassroots networks that are steeped in joy? Join Cassie Cooper of OUT Maine in this zine creation workshop designed to help connect community resources and take care of one another. We are stronger together and we each have knowledge that can change peoples’ lives. This session aims to generate conversations about Maine’s support systems by encouraging people to share their strengths and open their doors.

You’ll benefit from this workshop if you:
• Are a caring adult or young person wanting to deepen your connection to others and reduce isolation when supporting lgbtq+ youth
• Seek to pool resources and find new support systems that can help meet the moment
• Want to build relationships outside of your usual scope
• Want to be part of an expanding grassroots networks that are positive and affirming 

In this panel, you can expect to:
• Use your artistic faculties to create a zine that connects you to supportive systems, methods, and resources
• Connect with others and celebrate the successes they have had in their communities
• Share your knowledge with others in large and small groups
• Walk away with a tailored resource map that you can bring back to your organization and community

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360 Degrees of Support Roundtable: Creating Community Systems to Support Youth
Positive Environments | Meg Taft of the Rural Youth Institute

Do you want to build support into the very fabric of the communities in which youth live, grow, work, and play? Are you ready to imagine what effective support networks can look like, including in rural communities?  Join Meg Taft of Rural Youth Institute in this roundtable of fellow systems-minded leaders and learn the role of dedicated relationship routers. Begin the process of asset mapping for your community to cultivate social connection and reduce isolation for all youth regardless of where they live. 

You’ll benefit from this workshop if you:
• Regularly engage partnerships for your program, school, or network
• Are systems-minded and outcome-driven
• Seek to identify the strengths in the systems serving youth in your community to build a web of support
• Are curious about how relationship routers can help communities, including rural communities, become more supportive and effective for youth.

In this workshop, you can expect to:
• Reflect on your own community and interact with others about theirs.
• Begin to integrate relationship routers into your own planning, programming, and partnerships.
• Start the asset mapping process and bring the tool back to your community to build more supportive systems for the young people you serve.

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Relationships Built on Trust and Built to Last: A Power Sharing Model of Youth Development
Positive Experiences | Tucker Daniels of Maine Youth Action Network

Are you hoping to strengthen relationships between youth and adults and evolve your program beyond outdated models? Ever wonder what power-sharing means? Do you often have to balance your desire to trust youth with your fears about risks? If so, this workshop with Tucker Daniels of the Maine Youth Action Network is a perfect place to explore effective ways to elevate youth voice and offer choice when it comes to decision making in your program and beyond.

You’ll benefit from this workshop if you:
• Mentor, uplift, and seek to meaningfully partner with youth.
• Want to prepare youth for genuine leadership and find creative ways to offer choice
• Are curious about power-sharing and what it looks like in practice
• Would like to evolve past old models of adult-youth partnerships  

In this workshop, you can expect to:
• Engage in discussion and role play real-life scenarios
• Challenge myths around perceived/desired adult-relationship roles
• Identify small shifts that can make a big difference in strengthening youth partnerships and promoting positive youth development
• Develop confidence and skills in navigating conflict around different goals between adults and youth
• Build your discernment around issues of trust and risk

Creative Flow Circle
Morgan Mitchell

Join creatress and “flowcilitator” Morgan Mitchell in this playful art making session set to music.

You’ll enjoy this wellness offering if you:
• Love the feeling of being in a creative “flow” state
• Like playing with fun art supplies (paints are water-based) and listening to music
• Would like to connect with and revive your creative self 

In this offering you can expect to:
• Explore your relationship to creativity in a nonjudgmental space
• Let go of your notions of what makes an “artist,” release perfectionism and attachment to outcome
• Connect with others nonverbally by moving color across a series of easels, contributing to a series of collective pieces
• Open yourself to imagination and possibility

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Guided Nature Walk
Wolfe’s Neck Farm Staff

Join Wolfe’s Neck Center staff on this walking tour and revive your connection to place.

You’ll enjoy this wellness offering if you:
• Enjoy a good walk and connecting with your surroundings
• Feel nurtured by nature
• Want to ground yourself in place

In this offering you can expect to:
• Traverse the coastal farmlands of Wolfe’s Neck Farm
• Be invited to observe and wonder
• Learn about the land

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Wagon Ride
Wolfe’s Neck Farm Staff

Jump aboard a tractor-pulled wagon ride around Wolfe’s Neck Farm and enjoy the autumn air.

You’ll enjoy from this wellness offering if you:
• Appreciate beautiful scenery and wholesome fun
• Want to feel like a kid again!

In this offering you can expect:
• An expansive view of coastal farmland including fruit and vegetable fields and grazing animals
• A few happy bumps along the road with new and old friends

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Mindful Exploration
Self-Guided

Seize the moment for quiet reflection in this self-guided experience of Wolfe’s Neck Farm equipped with mindfulness cards. 

You’ll enjoy from this wellness offering if you:
• Seek peace, quiet, and self reflection
• Feel nurtured by nature
• Value mindfulness

In this offering you can expect:
• To use mindfulness cue cards that help you focus your attention and revive reflection
• Ground yourself at your own pace and in your own direction

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Gentle Yoga
Julie Schmidt

Revive your mind, body, and spirit in a gentle mindful movement session led by a registered yoga teacher and MyT staff member.

You’ll enjoy this wellness offering if you:
• Enjoy being guided in a sequence of accessible, subtle movements
• Want to connect with and create more space in your mind and body
• Like to take deep, slow breaths

In this offering you can expect to:
• Be welcomed exactly as you are
• Connect with yourself, nature, and to others in a supportive space
• Make choices that are right for your body; there are no wrong choices
• Move at your own pace

Positive Relationships for Youth Award Nominees: 

♦ The Center for Grieving Children – nominated for creating welcoming and safe space for kids to express their difficult stories and emotions around loss and grief, with a peer support model which creates meaningful connections between kids to support one another and practice empathy, reflective listening, and compassion.

♦ WinterKids – nominated for creating accessible opportunities for Maine children to experience the joy of outdoor winter play while fostering belonging, confidence, resilience, growth, and lifelong habits of health and activity.

♦ Hearty Roots – nominated for creating outdoor adventures blended with social-emotional learning that help youth connect with themselves, nature, and one another, and help youth cultivate self-understanding, friendships, and a deep appreciation for the land and water.

Positive Environments for Youth Award Nominees:

♦ My Place Teen Center – nominated for providing beautiful, thoughtful spaces for kids to feel included, welcomed, and loved at a time in their lives when those experiences are hard to find.

♦ Lisa Ravar, Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault – nominated for her work helping frontline educators build trust, adapt to
changing needs, and stay rooted in youth-centered, trauma-informed practices, and thereby creating the conditions that allow safe, nurturing environments for youth to flourish.

♦ The Landing Place – nominated for serving as a hub of youth support, mentorship, and empowerment in the community, with caring staff who engage youth in hard conversations about life, work, and school to uplift the voices of the young people they serve and find ways to improve their community.

♦ OUT Maine – nominated for creating affirming spaces, empowers families and schools, and hosts joyful celebrations like the Rainbow Ball—building belonging across the state.

Positive Experiences for Youth Award Nominees:

♦ The Center for Grieving Children – nominated for creating welcoming and safe space for kids to express their difficult stories and emotions around loss and grief, with a peer support model which creates meaningful connections between kids to support one another and practice empathy, reflective listening, and compassion.

♦ WinterKids – nominated for creating accessible opportunities for Maine children to experience the joy of outdoor winter play while fostering belonging, confidence, resilience, growth, and lifelong habits of health and activity.

♦ Hearty Roots – nominated for creating outdoor adventures blended with social-emotional learning that help youth connect with themselves, nature, and one another, and help youth cultivate self-understanding, friendships, and a deep appreciation for the land and water.

Resilience and Renewal: A Strengths-Based Panel on Healing and Well-being
Christopher Maloney of Augusta Teen Center, Marjie Longshore of Family Leadership Center, Stacey Jenkins of Full Bloom Therapy & The Kita Center, Steven J. Karaiskos of The Kita Center

Are you looking to elevate your approach to trauma-informed care with more strengths-based and healing-centered approaches? Join this conversation with mental health advocates and practitioners who are supporting youth through diverse challenges. The conversation will invite panelists and participants to reimagine what it means to weave dignity and resilience into our care for others and how to witness, honor, and harness the strengths youth bring.

You’ll benefit from this conversation if you:
• Are curious about healing-centered engagement and strengths-based approaches to trauma-informed care
• Seek to help foster dignity and connection for youth in the face of loss, grief, harm, and isolation
• Strive to play a powerful role in cultivating resilience and well-being in your community

In this conversation you can expect to:
• Hear stories and engage in perspective taking on what resilience requires and how you can play a positive role for youth
• Gain insights on how to foreground the strengths youth bring even in the face of adversity
• Learn from real life examples of community care that you can replicate in your own work

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Universal Design for Community Resilience: Small-Scale Techniques with Measurable Impact
Libby Catania of Our Place Portland

Interested in how to engage youth who are hard to reach or who seem to reject community programming? Want to know how universal design can help supporting youth and families for whom housing insecurity, refugee status, substance use, grief, etc create barriers to connection? Join founder of Our Place Portland, Libby Catania, to arrive at a new way of thinking about your program’s design that can create more positive outcomes for all youth according to the Child and Youth Resilience Measure. 

You’ll benefit from this workshop if you are:
• Motivated to take a new approach to your program design that actively engages all members of a community
• Finding it difficult to reach youth whose lived circumstances make engagement a challenge
• Curious about universal design and want to create simple frameworks that are relevant to all youth and families at the greatest extent possible, regardless of age, ability, identity, or background

In this workshop, you can expect to:
• Hear from real-world examples through video and podcast clips of youth from Our Place Portland paired with quantitative data from the program
• Experience an approach to whole-learning as an adult participant that you can replicate with youth
• Walk away with strategies from universal design that can render your program more relevant
• Gain whole-community tools that welcome and integrate a wider range of interests and identities

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Live Podcast of Embers with Valo Youth: Show Youth they Matter through Brave Conversations
Bella Rand of Casco Bay High, Murreal Wilmot of Maine Coast Waldorf School, Delvina Miremadi-Baldino of Maine Youth Thriving

If you’re ready to dig in and dive deep into mattering and help MyT launch a state-wide mattering movement, please join this live recorded conversation of the Valo podcast, Embers. Embers is where young people interview change-makers, big thinkers, and inspiring thought leaders to explore timely and compelling topics – fanning the embers burning in each of us. In this live episode roundtable, Valo and Maine mattering experts from MyT gather for a genuine and heartfelt discussion on what it means to bring mattering to life in a variety of spaces and how adults can speak up and speak bravely to make mattering a reality for everyone.

You’ll benefit from this conversation if you:
• Seek to better understand the nuances of mattering and what it looks like in a variety of contexts and communities
• Value youth leadership and want to know what questions matter to them
• Are ready to be part of a state-wide mattering movement!

In this conversation you can expect to:
• Listen to the live conversation and/or contribute your voice!
• See in action a powerful tool that elevates youth voice
• Walk away with new insights into the relational skills that can bring mattering to life in your community
• Receive the podcast recording and a conversation you can return to again and share with others

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Tangible Tools for Weaving Social Emotional Learning and Rituals into Groups
Haley Bezon, Katherine Kirchoff, Lauren Cucci of Hearty Roots

Do you want to help youth foster more self-love, empathy, and emotional regulation? Have you been longing to create spaces where kids of all neurodevelopmental abilities can express and talk about their feelings? Join Haley Bezon and Hearty Roots staff for this confidence-building workshop on how to weave rituals, inclusive of all youth, into your group work in ways that can deepen everyone’s social emotional growth.  

You’ll benefit from this workshop if you:
• Regularly gather with youth of various ages and abilities in any setting such as schools, youth programs, community centers, etc.
• Want more engaging ways to strengthen empathy, social-emotional learning, and relationship-building
• Seek to be more effective in supporting kids and teens in opening up and digging a little deeper with you and one another

In this workshop, you can expect to:
• Put on your “kid hat”!
• Engage in activities that you can replicate in your own youth development work
• Build your confidence in authentically connecting with youth on a deeper level
• Walk away with favorite rituals from Hearty Roots including youth-approved emotional games & activities that support their well-being and help them feel comfortable expressing themselves
• Gain practices that are supportive of neurodiverse youth

Creative Flow Circle
Morgan Mitchell

Join creatress and “flowcilitator” Morgan Mitchell in this playful art making session set to music.

You’ll enjoy this wellness offering if you:
• Love the feeling of being in a creative “flow” state
• Like playing with fun art supplies (paints are water-based) and listening to music
• Would like to connect with and revive your creative self 

In this offering you can expect to:
• Explore your relationship to creativity in a nonjudgmental space
• Let go of your notions of what makes an “artist,” release perfectionism and attachment to outcome
• Connect with others nonverbally by moving color across a series of easels, contributing to a series of collective pieces
• Open yourself to imagination and possibility

———————————————————

Guided Nature Walk
Wolfe’s Neck Farm Staff

Join Wolfe’s Neck Center staff on this walking tour and revive your connection to place.

You’ll enjoy this wellness offering if you:
• Enjoy a good walk and connecting with your surroundings
• Feel nurtured by nature
• Want to ground yourself in place

In this offering you can expect to:
• Traverse the coastal farmlands of Wolfe’s Neck Farm
• Be invited to observe and wonder
• Learn about the land

———————————————————

Wagon Ride
Wolfe’s Neck Farm Staff

Jump aboard a tractor-pulled wagon ride around Wolfe’s Neck Farm and enjoy the autumn air.

You’ll enjoy from this wellness offering if you:
• Appreciate beautiful scenery and wholesome fun
• Want to feel like a kid again!

In this offering you can expect:
• An expansive view of coastal farmland including fruit and vegetable fields and grazing animals
• A few happy bumps along the road with new and old friends

———————————————————

Mindful Exploration
Self-Guided

Seize the moment for quiet reflection in this self-guided experience of Wolfe’s Neck Farm equipped with mindfulness cards. 

You’ll enjoy from this wellness offering if you:
• Seek peace, quiet, and self reflection
• Feel nurtured by nature
• Value mindfulness

In this offering you can expect:
• To use mindfulness cue cards that help you focus your attention and revive reflection
• Ground yourself at your own pace and in your own direction

———————————————————

Intuitive Movement
Meg LeMay

Revive your mind, body, and spirit in a gentle mindful movement session led by a mindfulness practitioner and MyT staff member.

You’ll enjoy this wellness offering if you:
• Enjoy both meditative stillness and moving to music
• Want freedom to explore what movements feel right for you
• Love a good dance party!

In this offering you can expect to:
• Be welcomed exactly as you are
• Connect with yourself, nature, and to others in a supportive space
• Make choices that are right for your body; there are no wrong choices
• Move at your own pace