2022 Piton Fellowship Youth Cohort Examine Youth Mental Health, Self Sufficiency

July 27, 2022

2022 PITON FELLOWSHIP YOUTH COHORT EXAMINE YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH, SELF SUFFICIENCY

A group of Metro Denver changemakers age 14-20 was asked to lend its brilliance to a pair of pressing issues in the summer of 2022

By Gary Community Ventures Staff

The Youth Cohort of Gary Community Venture’s Piton Fellowship is a summer leadership development program comprised of Metro Denver changemakers ages 14-20, who are interested in joining a powerful network of community members as they learn and progress on their leadership journeys.

The 2022 cohort was asked to lend their brilliance to a pair of pressing problems in the summer of 2022: youth mental health & youth self sufficiency. Namely:

  1. The ongoing “state of emergency” for youth mental health, as articulated by Children’s Hospital Colorado.
  2. Increasing self-sufficiency standards among K-12 youth, so that they might become better prepared for the world they will inhabitant when they leave the public education system.

The 2022 Youth Cohort diligently worked over the course of 6 weeks, with support from Sienna Chambers, Matti Dimmick and Garfield Warren, Gary’s partners from the Urban Leaders Fellowship (ULF), conducting research, executing interviews and preparing presentations on their findings and recommendations as to how Denver and Colorado might address these issues.

The cohort presented their findings to an audience that included Gary Community Ventures employees, community partners and past Piton Fellowship participants. The Youth Cohort’s invaluable reports and findings will continue to inform solutions sought by the Gary team.

FEATURED PROJECT: EXAMINING YOUTH SELF-SUFFICIENCY
The Youth Self-Sufficiency, Group 2 team presented their report to their peers and a live audience at History Colorado on July 26, 2022.

This is a presentation from one of two cohort groups who examined the youth self-sufficiency question. The group offered the following explanation and takeaways from their work:

Approach
In brainstorming self-sufficiency we began to think of what we wished schools taught us, contrasting from what we learned through community and external resources. We focused on skills fundamental to financial stability, pursuing passions, and achieving careers. Based on feedback from politicians, life coaches, business owners, and young adults with a variety of experiences, we found that interviewees from the Denver area are pleased with their education and career experience, but most people learned the most useful language, financial, and emotional skills from external outlets, but wished they would have learned these skills from their K-12 education. From the experts, we learned that robust non-academic and alternative education is imperative to furthering the success of our students.

Conclusion
As Gary Community Ventures moves forward with creating programs to help young adults become self sufficient, we recommend special attention to researching and advocating for changes in school curriculum to include more classes with highly specialized teachers in fields like long-term financial education and emotional health, as well as researching alternative graduation paths for students whose passions don’t follow the traditional college-track.

ABOUT THE PITON FELLOWSHIP

The Piton Fellowship is designed to help leaders in business, policy and philanthropy leverage dedicated financial and strategic support from Gary Community Ventures to expand their knowledge, network and potential to drive positive change for themselves and their communities. An emphasis is being placed on leaders of color as part of an ongoing effort to bridge the historic gap between diverse talent  and access to leadership opportunities.

Aside from the Youth Cohort, the Piton Fellowship has two other cohorts for different age and professional experience levels. The Early Career Cohort is comprised of Metro Denver leaders with similar aspirations and 2-5 years of experience, while the Mid-Career Cohort is recruiting leaders with 10+ years experience.

You can nominate fellows year-end here.

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