By Sarah Averbeck, Young Adult Leader

On June 29th 2021, our amazing Teen Health Educators and Young Adult Leaders had the opportunity to participate in our first in-person event of the year, the annual retreat! Held at DaySprings Conference Center in Parrish, the team shared team building, skills development, a time for reflection and a whole lot of fun and celebration.

Just like much of the world, the Healthy Teens has been operating almost entirely virtually since March 2020. While we have been delivering summer programs in person again, this was the first chance for many of our team to meet together in person, despite having worked together online for up to a year!

As part of the day, the team had the opportunity to hear from some incredible guest speakers who gave up their time to serve the Healthy Teens team. Kali Richardson, of KaliSpeaks, shared tips on communicating with confidence when we are giving presentations in our community. The team got a chance to choose a favorite topic and then prepare and share as much information as they could in one minute about that topic, to demonstrate what it feels like to present confidently i.e., on something they care about. Kali’s activity strengthened their public speaking skills along with being a fabulous icebreaker. Check out Kali’s work further via kalirichardson.com, @officialkalispeaks (Instagram), or @KaliSpeakersAloud (Facebook).

The team also had the opportunity to work with Ethan Weiss, a local licensed clinical social worker from Telement Therapy. Ethan  discussed some of the information the team have learned about trauma. He then helped them learn how to reflect on the challenges, discoveries and successes from the past year during Covid-19. This gave a chance for the team to be open and vulnerable together about some of the traumatic events we have faced in our lives.  A special thank you also to Dr. Stacie Herrera of Herrera Psychology for partnering us with Ethan.