June 2020 Newsletter

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Our amazing poster was designed by STAY Project Member Ashlyn Kittrell! Hey STAY Project & Black Appalachian Young & Rising fam-– we see you.   Y’all who are on the front lines, organizing your communities, gathering your people, turning up in the streets, we see you. Y’all who are grieving, fighting to take care of yourselves and your people, who are deep in heartbreak, just making it through day by day, we see you. Y’all who are angry, raging, or ready to, and looking to channel that righteous indignation into liberatory action, we see you. Y’all who are feeling the isolation, unsure of how to move or who to move with, looking for comrades, for community, for connection, for a political home, we see you. Y’all who are ready to build, ready to fight and to love, ready to learn and to share, to gather and to organize, ready to vision, cultivate, and practice a transformed world, we see you.   We are feeling all of it too, holding it all every day, and y’all should definitely come be our friends so we can hold it all, feel it all, build with it, and move together. We are inviting you to join our 2020 Virtual STAY Summer Institute which will be held throughout the month of July. We will kick off on July 1st at 7:30pm EST/6:30pmCST onInstagram live! Then throughout the month we will have workshops led for and by youth with topics including: Imagining our Communities without Police, Community Organizing 101, Sexy Sex Ed, and more! We will have virtual gathering space for LGBTQIA youth, trans & nonbinary youth, and Black youth to connect with each other across Appalachia. AND we will have space to just chill! You can share your knowledge and skills by submitting a workshop or show off your mad talents during our virtual talent show!   The Stay Together Appalachian Youth Project (STAY) has been out here holding radical youth led space, connecting a network of young folks across the hills, hollers, and hoods of Appalachia, caring for each other, making political home, dreaming of, visioning, and practicing liberation, and doing the work to make our communities places we can and want to STAY.   We miss y'all so Register for the STAY Virtual Summer Institute so we can be connected during this revolutionary moment.   Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions!   kinship & solidarity,   The STAY Project and Staff & Steering Committee Register for the 2020 Virtual STAY Summer Institute STAY Connected & STAY Informed These are unprecedented times, and young people are at the forefront of a grassroots movement for racial justice and community transformation, during a pandemic in which we are at home caring for our families, experiencing high unemployment and neglected by our government. all over appalachia youth are leading protests from hollers to hoods, and developing meaningful mutual aid networks to keep each other safe. we want to document these experiences because we know that we are making history right now. send us your poems, prose, drawings, photography, cartoons, collages—let’s put this movement to paper as we collect our communities in grief, rage, hope, healing and the pursuit of equity and justice. the appalachian youth revolution zine is coming. Appalachian youth up to age 30 can submit at stayproject@gmail.com with subject line “zine submission,” along with your name, age, and where you’re from. Mental Health Resources for Black Youth Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective - A collective of advocates, yoga teachers, artists, therapists, lawyers, religious leaders, teachers, psychologists and activists committed to the emotional/mental health and healing of Black communities. Provides a Black Virtual Therapy Directory and Resource. Therapy for Black Girls - Podcast & Website. Dr. Joy Harden Bradford is a licensed psychologist, speaker and the host of the wildly popular mental health podcast, Therapy for Black Girls. Her work focuses on making mental health topics more relevant and accessible for Black women and she delights in using pop culture to illustrate psychological concepts. NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) We have been able to disperse $20,000 to youth throughout Appalachia to date. We encourage folks to apply as needed and will continue to disperse funds as we have them.  Please donate so we can continue to support youth in crisis. Donate to the COVID-19 Youth Mutual Aid Fund Request COVID-19 Mutual Aid Join our Appalachian Youth Movement! Wanna join the STAY Project? We’ve added a membership form to our website! If you are between the ages of 14-30 and living in Appalachia and want to be a member of the STAY Project, head on over to our membership page and fill out the form. If you are a current member go ahead and fill out the form to update your information. Be a part of a movement for youth and by youth that is working towards a just, sustainable, and equitable Appalachia! Did y'all hear that STAY is now offering financial support to members who are organizing projects/events in their communities? We are able to offer up to $200 to support members’ projects that align with our mission and core beliefs. Specifically, we are hoping to support projects/events that further STAY’s work of providing space for young Appalachians to gather, learn with/from, create, and work together. To learn more and to request support, fill out this form! When you give to the STAY Project you are nourishing a grassroots movement by youth and for youth in Appalachia. We could not do our work without the support of a community that believes in us. Thank you for believing in us! Donate to the STAY Project! Share Tweet Forward Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*