Youth Forum 2025: Uplifting Teen Voices

Tags: CCTT, Mental Health, Youth Development

On March 3rd, 2025, the Community Collaborative of Tahoe-Truckee (CCTT) and its partners hosted their annual youth forum. The annual event brings together local young people with decision-makers in education and student wellness. Tahoe Truckee Unified School District and CCTT, a Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation (TTCF) program, have collaborated on the event for 20 years. The Youth Forum provides a unique opportunity for high school juniors and seniors to share their perspectives, ideas, and priorities for future community initiatives. The forum’s influence on resource development and policy improvement cannot be understated. 

“The outcomes of past youth forums have led to more opportunities for youth participation through committees, clubs, and feedback channels. This year, the topics raised by youth reflect areas our collective efforts have been actively addressing, affirming that we are moving in the right direction and that their input is valuable in shaping our solutions,” explained Kristina Kind, TTCF Program Director.

Creating Safe Space To Empower Youth Voices

To prepare for the event, youth participants from various TTUSD schools met with CCTT to share their thoughts about the critical themes and created questions to be utilized during the forum. Youth participants were recruited through youth-facing organizations or their school counselors. Staff and counselors focused on recruiting students from a variety of perspectives, backgrounds, and schools, ensuring adult participants could hear similarities and differences across school cultures and experiences.

“Students picked the topics by each choosing a single theme they felt was the most important to talk about at this event,” explained Maeve Donovan, Program Manager for TTCF. “Students then voted on each other’s topics, and the top three subjects were selected as the topics of the Youth Forum. Students then wrote what questions they would most like to be asked, and those questions are what were asked during the forum.” 

During the forum, all participating students and adults were broken into smaller groups with mixed ages. The purpose was to listen actively to the students’ perspectives. 

A unique feature of this forum was having Spanish-speaking groups, where the facilitator, students, and adults could speak freely in a language with which they were more comfortable. 

Following the smaller groups, the adults and students split up. The adults met to discuss their observations and insights, while the students discussed their overall experience during the event. 

“After the forum, [students] reflected on the power of their voice, and they appreciated the rare experience of adults simply listening — without providing advice, interrupting, or taking over the conversation,” reflects Maddie Leh, Academic Year Program Manager for Adventure Risk Challenge and adult participant. “The youth forum isn’t just a space for local youth to speak and share their experiences,” Leh explains. “It’s an opportunity for adults to truly listen. When we uplift youth voices and take their perspectives and insights seriously, we build a stronger, more inclusive community where all generations work together for meaningful change.

Youth Voices Guide Regional Behavioral Health Efforts 

The impact of this forum on resource development and policy improvement cannot be understated. A key theme observed during the forum is the need for mental health resources. Positive mental health allows young adults to grow into healthy, well-adjusted, thriving adults. 

This theme is directly connected to our Behavioral Health Landscape and Roadmap, which guides the strategy of TTCF and our regional mental and behavioral health partners. The Roadmap outlines collective strategies to address identified needs and gaps, such as reducing behavioral health social stigma, enhancing substance use disorder treatment options, and increasing awareness of available resources. 

TTCF and our CCTT partners continuously revisit and refine strategies to ensure we are responding effectively to emerging needs. Additionally, we make annual investments in programs and services aimed at addressing these critical mental health needs and are currently working on improving information and access to substance use information and referrals.  

Thank you to the following organizations whose collective efforts made this year’s Youth Forum possible: CCTT, TTUSD’s Wellness Centers and Counselors, Gateway Mountain Center, Adventure Risk Challenge, the Truckee Library, The Aspen Collective, La Fuerza, and Nevada County Youth Commission.

How You Can Help/Get Involved

Donate to TTCF’s Community Mental Health Fund to directly help us build a healthier, stronger, and happier Tahoe-Truckee community. Your ongoing support can make a lasting difference. 

By becoming a monthly donor to the Community Mental Health Fund, you’ll help sustain and develop essential mental health services for the North Tahoe-Truckee community year-round. Together, we can build a happier, healthier community. Donate now.

About CCTT:

The Community Collective of Tahoe-Truckee includes more than 45 organizations dedicated to supporting children and families through health, education, and social services. Established over 25 years ago, CCTT addresses pressing community issues by uniting various organizations to collaborate to improve the well-being of Tahoe-Truckee residents.