The Appalachian Highlands shOUT Coalition presents a webinar by The STAY Project.
The STAY Together Appalachian Youth Project is a network of young people, aged 14-30, who are committed to supporting one another to make Appalachia a place youth can and want to STAY, and they have important perspectives to share on the power and potential of youth and organizing.
STAY involves youth from the Appalachian counties of eastern Kentucky, East Tennessee, Southwestern Virginia, Western North Carolina, West Virginia, and Northern Alabama.
STAY Project's work is to provide opportunities for young people in Appalachia to gather, connect, play, share skills, and challenge each other so that together we can challenge systems of oppression and envision the world we want to build in Appalachia and beyond.
STAY's programming is where they make their vision a reality, by bringing youth together across the lines that would divide us, and deciding together what they want to do to make our region a better place. STAY’s regional gatherings, fellowships, and governance positions have afforded young people in the region opportunities to learn new skills, form alliances, deal with personal struggles, and engage more effectively in organizational and community leadership roles locally and nationally.
Throughout Appalachia many organizations provide direct services to youth or gather them to participate in community activities. The STAY Project asks and invests in young people to be the decision makers, to lead one another and contribute solutions to community needs in the region through popular education-style collective learning.
The Appalachian Highlands shOUT (sexual health outreach) Coalition is an emerging collective impact effort currently anchored by the Appalachian Replication Project, Ballad Health, YWCA of NETN/SWVA, and the Virginia Department of Health’s Mount Rogers Health District. Along with other partners throughout Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee, shOUT works to transform community systems to better serve the sexual health needs of area youth.
shOUT also is presenting a summit for regional professionals called “Healthy Teens to Healthy Adutls: Charting a New Path. Find out more about the summit and get links to register here.