Our Work

Youth Connect now reaches more than 300 young people across Shelby County every year, connecting them to free individual and group counseling with a therapist they chose themselves.

Sustaining that reach is our first priority. It means keeping our therapist roster deep enough that every young person has a real choice, keeping sessions free at the point of care, and keeping the path from "I think I need to talk to someone" to a first appointment as short as we can make it.

Mental health work should not only happen in a counseling room. The Feel Good Fest will be a yearly gathering built for Shelby County youth: a day to celebrate, connect, and experience mental wellness as something joyful rather than clinical.

Our goal for this period is to establish the first Feel Good Fest and set the foundation for it to return every year.

Youth Connect works. It now reaches more than 300 young people across Shelby County each year through a therapist network, intake pathway, and community partnerships that are already built and running.

The next stage widens that same pathway to age 25. Participants currently age out at 18, precisely when the transitions counseling helps most with begin: leaving school, starting work, living independently. Extending the age range lets them stay with a therapist they already trust instead of starting over somewhere new.

This is an expansion of proven infrastructure rather than a build from zero. The therapist roster, the referral process, and the relationships that make Youth Connect work all carry forward, which is what makes the added reach efficient.