By: Ashley Church
Happy New Year! As part of our New Year's resolution to expand our advocacy for mental health awareness and peer-to-peer support for youth and young adults across Virginia, we decided to start a blog.
First, it would help to explain who we are and what we do. Youth MOVE Virginia, formally known as Virginia Youth Leadership Network, is a program under Virginia Family Network, which is part of NAMI Virginia. The whole goal of the program is to advocate for mental health awareness and peer-to-peer support in youth and young adults. Youth MOVE Virginia started out as a youth advisory board, called Virginia Youth Leadership Network, made up of approximately twelve youth and young adults that either have lived experience of a mental illness; a close family member or friend living with mental illness; or young adults that are in programs of study in college that feel like being a part of Youth MOVE Virginia will help them in their chosen field of study--a couple of examples of this are teaching and social work. We decided to apply to be the state chapter for Youth Move and we recently got approved.
We accomplish our goal of advocating for mental health awareness and peer-to-peer support through a wide variety of methods. We hold support and activity groups for youth and young adults living with mental illness and their youth and young adult family and friends; we raise money for and attend NAMI Virginia's annual walk that is held each October; we participate in the legislative process by weighing in on bills up for amendment, attending Regional Budget Hearings and speaking, attending Advocacy Day that is held each January in Richmond; holding summits and trainings focused on youth and young adult mental health, in which we invite speakers from various mental health organizations from all over the country; attending the state and national NAMI conventions; and running a blog about mental health conditions, general mental health, reflections on events and activities done through Youth MOVE Virginia, and various conditions and circumstances that can go along with having a mental health condition such as substance abuse, being able to complete school and holding a job, and relationship issues, including LGBT.
We are working on getting profiles up of the current youth advisory board members, so readers can get an idea of who we are individually and perhaps be able to relate to our stories and experience.
