12 Jan 2017

The 2016 Consolidated Youth Winter Institute

In partnership with the Office on Violence Against Women, the Consolidated Youth Technical Assistance Team consisting of ALSO, Break the Cycle, and Men Can Stop Rape, hosted the 2016 Consolidated Youth Winter Institute, “Learning from Each Other: Sharing Grantee Successes”, in San Diego on December 15-16, 2016. This Institute spotlighted current grantees’ work and provided an opportunity for them to share their knowledge and accomplishments among fellow Consolidated Youth Program grantees. Grantees were provided a space to learn from one another through shared learning and discussions of challenges and solutions within their programs and communities. Topics included youth-informed and youth-led programming, evaluation strategies, social media and marketing, victim-defined safety, and building and maintaining partnerships.

This was my first Consolidated Youth Institute experience and I can’t say enough about how much I appreciated being a part of it as a Program Coordinator. I had the opportunity to put faces to names and learn about all the great work our grantees are doing with children, youth, and families. I especially liked how interactive grantees were with one another, networking with others doing similar work in different communities, as well as engaging with grantees at varying levels of the grant process. It was especially rewarding to hear how our technical assistance and support has helped grantees with program successes and progress.

We were also able to introduce our Exploring Safety Learning Community (ESLC) to all Consolidated Youth program grantees. Members of the ESLC had the opportunity to share what being a part of the learning community has meant to them and ways they’ve been able to have conversations on the concepts of “safer” and “safe enough” in regards to safety planning for children, youth, and adult survivors. As we have been working with the ESLC since this past summer, it was exciting to see how much the members have grown in their understanding and beliefs around these complex concepts. We’re looking forward to continuing these conversations as a learning community and working to utilize child/youth/victim-defined approaches in our prevention, intervention, and response work.

I also loved having the chance to meet the young people who work alongside our grantees and hear about the dynamic things they’ve been doing in their communities around gender-based violence. These young people are actively engaged in bringing awareness to other young people, having critical conversations with their peers, and showing other men and boys that they can be allies to women. I appreciated seeing youth in leadership roles and collaborating with one another to make a difference within their generation, cultures, and communities. One grantee shared this powerful video of their work with youth. As I scanned the room while this video was playing, everyone was intently listening to the words these two youth were so passionately sharing. Sometimes it’s difficult to know how impactful our work is because we work behind the scenes, but it’s things like this that show us just how significant the programming and services really are.

Before ending our 2-day conference, we asked participants to answer one last question, “What is one word to describe your experience at the 2016 Consolidated Youth Winter Institute?” These words show just how meaningful this gathering was for those in attendance.

cy winter institute blog word cloud

I’m extremely lucky to be a part of this field and ALSO and look forward to many more institutes, meetings, and conferences with our partners and grantees.  Thanks for making this such a memorable first experience for me!

Written by Stephanie Hausen, MSW
ALSO Program Coordinator

Main Menu >