Happy New Year Partners Community! This newsletter brings my sincere hopes that you are well and that this New Year brings you the very best. As for many, 2021 brought a mix of challenge and celebration to us at Partners. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged on, our youth--along with youth throughout our nation--showed signs of stress and emergency-level youth mental health concerns became apparent throughout our state. As the number of youth referred for our services grew steadily, recruiting enough adults to support them as mentors was more challenging than ever. None the less, we were able to serve a record number of youth for our organization--632 local youth participated in one of our programs.
We are glad to look back on the bright spots of 2021. We were pleased to experience some--albeit brief--reprieve from the severity of the pandemic during the last quarter when we host some of our favorite youth activities. It was so fun to gather in-person with youth and volunteers at our Bowling Bash and our Spark Holiday Joy activity. Earlier in the year we had the opportunity to partner with some other local nonprofits in providing summer learning support to high school students in Fort Collins as the pandemic challenged their academic progress and social connection. Additionally, 2021 brought expansion of School-Based Mentoring into Thompson School District and in our Prevention Education services region wide. In our community coalition work and the Responsible Association of Retailors programming, we had the opportunity to walk alongside adults in various sectors who created messaging and awareness about youth substance misuse prevention and education. All these contributions brought several new faces to our staff team, including our first ever Youth Advisor Intern! Now a full team of 18, we are motivated to serve even more youth and community members in 2022. Thank you for supporting our work and for joining with us in being a part of the positive in our communities. May 2022 bring us all health and happiness.
