Lima Street Youth Conference - Big Success

 Photo: Small group exercises on coalition building.

Photo: Talking next steps for the meeting and the coalition with Carmen and Robina.

 

Yesterday was our first Street Youth Conference in Lima. It was a smashing success. We had over 50 participants from 17 different organizations that work with youth and vulnerable young adults. We spent 5-hours talking about opportunities for collaboration, best practices in serving youth and young adults, and ways that they (the assembled group of very different organizations) may want to build a coalition.

It may be too soon to fully define the next steps of our work, but there was a palpable enthusiasm from everyone in attendance. We asked every attendee to complete a final evaluation. From the information in the evaluations we will strategize around next steps. These next steps may include helping to set-up a collation, providing focused training and skills development around best practices in serving homeless and underserved youth, and working to form an on-going “community of practice” (e.g. learning community) for the organizations that were in attendance.

As for our next steps on this trip - We are headed to Arequipa tomorrow for a day long “phase II” conference on Saturday at La Salle University. You may remember that we organized a street youth conference in May in Arequipa with La Salle University. The participants at the first conference asked us to come back and help them build the steps necessary to grow a coalition. They also asked us to facilitate a day long training around trauma informed care. We will be doing just that on Saturday.

On Friday night we will be presenting a general discussion a La Salle University on the influence of trauma in the developing brain. The University has asked us to make this presentation open to the general public. Who knows how many people will be in attendance? Check out their website at: http://www.ulasalle.edu.pe/index.php/btn-eventos/btn-trauma

I will be writing to give you another update on Saturday. Until then, please know how much of an impact our work is making in Peru. At the end of our conference today a young psychologist came up to me and said, “this has been really great. We rarely get the opportunity to come together and talk about these types of issues. I really appreciate the fact that your organization is dedicated to doing this for us You just don’t know how much a difference it means for our work.”

Thanks for all of your support – and please know that we are making a difference . . . one organization at a time.