The SPAN Youth Hub

Atif Deen, a board member of the Youth As Self Advocate (YASA), spoke about his experiences, challenges, and tips on speaking up for his disability. This was the first guest speaker on the SPAN Youth Chat. Deen's advice to never give up and to speak up for their concerns. Having fears and concerns about your future is normal, but the first step is finding your support team (parents, guardians, teachers, or therapists. He has fought for his right to a fair and equitable education. After facing several obstacles, and shunned after voicing concerns. He now has the accommodations that were possible with his persistence and the support of his team. The SPAN YouTube channel will feature other youth and young adults like Atif who have self-advocated for themselves.  Do you have any questions for Atif Deen? Let us know in the comment section below. If you have any youth, ages 13-26, then join us Wednesday at 3:00 - 3:30 PM for our youth chats. The link is below to register.  Author, Jeremy

Money makes the world go-round. With money, we buy food, clothes, pay rent, and all of our needs. We all learn to start managing or saving our money. Budgeting is an important life skill that will help you make the best of each dollar. Whether it's an allowance, weekly paycheck, or holiday cash gifts, as you grow up there is more money and each dollar should serve a purpose.  Everyone's budget is different, so there are few steps to make a smart budget that you can follow. The website, teenfinancialfreedom.com , has a list of ten tips for teens learning how to budget. While this list is geared towards teens, the tips can be useful for just about anyone looking to budget their money in the best way possible. Tips like creating spending categories, opening a savings account, tracking where your money goes, and other great advice to helping save your money. Another resource is "JumpStart's Reality Check," a quiz for youth and young adults to learn how to plan their f

We all make mistakes, but it's harder to start learning from them. After making a mistake, everyone usually thinks about how did it go wrong. Yet we should be asking ourselves, how do I learn from it? The first step is to develop or build a growth mindset. The "Growth Mindset: help you grow," a YouTube video of two women who either learn from their mistake or easily forgets about it. A young artist sketching a plant would throw away each painting with a mistake. She starts to learn when she hangs up the paintings with the mistakes, so she won't repeat them. Check out the  Learning From Failure: 5 Inspiring Life Lessons website with tips to achieve success through failures. Mistakes are a learning opportunity, so we can become better and build stronger habits.  The youth from the chat had a lot of great advice to share with everyone. They spoke about using mistakes as examples to learn about what they did wrong. A youth shared a great quote, "every success in life

Spring is around the corner and the days are long, and the weather is warmer. Weather like this can help youth and young adults with their mental health. But someone having trouble with their mental health isn't always easy to spot. There signs and steps to teach youth on helping others with their behavior, feelings, or thoughts.  If a friend, family member, or yourself are having trouble with mental health, here is a way to learn the signs. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) infographic has ten common warning signs to look for. Which include "feeling sad or withdrawn for more than two weeks" or "seriously trying to harm or kill oneself or making plans to do so."   The "Getting the Right Start - Student Guide to Mental Health" lists warning signs, as well as other information, to help notice any mental health issues happening in your life. Following that, read the rest of the infographic, and you will see useful information, like who to tal

It's been about one full year since COVID-19 lockdowns and quarantines began across the United States. It's been one year since businesses shuttered, schools closed, and staying at home became the new normal. This is a tough year for everyone and exhausted us physically, but the anxiety, uncertainty, and stress have done their part to make it mentally and emotionally straining as well. We learned how to cope with all the physical stresses, yet all need help on the mental ones. This week, our awesome group returns for another discussion, this time on coping with anxiety during the pandemic. The CDC recognizes that while efforts like social distancing are needed to keep people safe. This isn't normal, and people feel lonely not seeing family and friends. This can lead to negative physical changes like stomach pains, loss of appetite, and headaches. Some of the remedies to these issues are eating regularly, going to bed early, and making time to relax. ( Mental Health and Copi

The roads are clean, the skies are clear, and the snow is melting. But we don't need warmer weather to organize youth to support youth.  Youth As Self Advocates (YASA) is an independent and diverse national advisory board run by a panel of young people with disabilities. YASA has people from all different walks of life, and its goal is to support youth and young adults with disabilities or health care needs. The good news is that they are recruiting! Here are a few parts of their webpage worth mentioning: Our mission is to educate society about issues concerning us. We are leaders in our communities and we help spread helpful, positive information among our peers to increase knowledge around various issues concerning us. We also help health care professionals, policymakers, and other adults in our communities understand what it is like to live our lives. We share our personal stories to help improve services and support for ourselves and other youth. We embrace the slogan, “nothing