The Cornerstone Youth Advocacy model will be reviewed in this training to give you insight into proven practices for empowering youth self-advocacy, fostering collaborative partnerships, and nurturing leadership skills. You’ll learn how to help youth feel safe and recover from crisis by validating feelings and being an askable adult, meeting them where they’re at, and teaching tools to cope with challenges.

By watching this Interview-Style training, you’ll learn why grassroots movements are so important in youth work. You'll learn some of the strategies you need to know to be an effective youth work advocate. This training focuses on the seven pillars of a grassroots movement. Don’t wait for someone else to change what we all know needs fixing…light the fire inside yourself and get involved!

PPAR (Parent Participatory Action Research) is an effective approach to improving parental engagement. The PPAR findings shared in this training were collected in schools, but the proven benefits of PPAR apply to many other youth-serving settings and programs. Join us to consider the challenges and opportunities of engaging parents as partners in your program, and how you can implement PPAR. Even if you can’t facilitate the PPAR process within your youth-serving organization, you’ll still gain valuable insights for equitable parent engagement.

Join us to learn about the rights youth have in various settings and contexts. You’ll come to recognize the scope of your support and your capacity for cultural responsiveness. That will help you recognize when it’s time to collaborate with other professionals and how to do so. You’ll gain resources to assist youth in understanding their rights, so you can encourage your youth to self-advocate.

The Democratic Youth Engagement (DYE) model encourages adults working with young people to step beyond a limiting “fix the kid” approach and instead bring creative collaboration to the relationship. This training will give you space to explore the values and virtues of democratically engaging with young people. And you’ll strengthen your ability to model healthy adult behavior and emotional regulation.

This training is specific to Minnesota, but if you live in another state the fundamentals will still be beneficial to you. Join us so you too can be an exceptional youth work advocate. You’ll learn how an idea becomes a law, the cycles of the budget process, basic skills to successfully advocate with elected officials on the life changing interventions you provide, how to engage others in your work, and you’ll consider the concept of trauma informed advocacy. You’ll gain knowledge and skills to confidently advocate for the youth work that matters to you and your community. Invite the youth you serve to join you for this training. Be the change!

View this training individually or with the youth you serve. Either way, you’ll be inspired by video clips of youth inviting you to become socially engaged. This training will provide a historical perspective of social change and help you develop insight about your elected officials. You’ll learn strategies and receive tips on how to make the most of youth worker activism. Discover what social activism in youth work is all about. This cause needs all of us right now!

In this training you'll learn to recognize the signs and distinguish the differences between burnout and secondary traumatic stress. That awareness will help you choose more effective self-care prevention and intervention strategies for yourself. You’ll go beyond a typical self-care training by learning how supervisors and organizations can improve their abilities to support you as a youth worker and make well-being a priority. Engaging your entire organization as an active partner in providing support and stress prevention tools and strategies will help everyone show up healthy and whole for the youth you serve.

Explore what it means to adopt a mentoring mindset to enhance your youth work. You’ll learn about the Developmental Relationships Framework and how to make the most of a mentoring mindset. By understanding the characteristics of effective mentors, you’ll be able to create and support quality relationships with youth. You’ll also learn how Critical Mentoring is advancing the mentoring field forward to raise youth voice and address structural challenges that impact young people.

This training will focus on strategies to make healthy choices attractive and accessible to youth. You’ll learn to recognize common myths and misconceptions about making healthy choices. You’ll gain an understanding of behavior change basics, the dimensions of wellness, and how to increase interest and motivation for healthy behaviors in youth.

You'll learn about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and the impact they have on brain development. You’ll hear about common symptoms and be given practical tips for working with youth struggling with FASD. Register today and improve your ability to make a real difference in the lives of these youth.

In this interactive presentation, you will explore the intersectionality of positive youth development and how to comfortably talk about sexuality topics in your role as a youth worker. You’ll leave with increased understanding of how positive youth development practices and authentic partnerships with youth can have a huge impact on how they learn and grow into sexually healthy young adults.

You’ll learn about enthusiastic consent and different ways to ask for consent. You’ll consider effective conversations to have at each developmental age, beyond just how to say ‘no’. Statistics and reasons why sexual assault goes underreported will also be addressed. The statistics may be alarming, but with effective consent education you’ll help young people build boundaries and maintain healthy relationships to prevent sexual assault.

By taking this Interview-Style training, you’ll understand the connection between exploitation and youth experiencing homelessness, the effects of community systems, and what survival mode means. And, you’ll know steps that you can take to make a positive impact.

This training is just a short introduction to the practices and benefits of mindfulness. In no time at all, you’ll discover how easy it is to fit it into your daily routine. And the more you apply mindfulness techniques, the more you’ll realize the many benefits of the practice. You’ll also learn how you can introduce mindfulness to youth of all ages. This is a vital skill for you to develop and share. Register today!

Join us to learn just what executive functioning is and what specific skills are developed. You’ll gain insight into the impact these skills have on a young person’s academic, social, and behavioral skills. More importantly, you’ll learn what you can do to strengthen those skills through the quality of your programs and your relationships with young people.

This training is relevant to anyone working with middle school and high school aged youth. Even if a young person’s next step is staying in school, you can spark their critical thinking skills and motivate them to start exploring options now. You’ll gain actionable strategies that are backed by research, along with resources you can use. You’ll learn about the common challenges young people may experience along the way, including the inequities underserved communities face, and how you can help them be more successful as they create a life that brings them joy and fulfillment.

Using a conversational format, this training will explore the trials and tribulations associated with adolescence and helps you gain a better understanding of this crucial developmental stage. Upon completion, you will be better equipped to guide young people into adulthood.

Join us for this insightful training and discover new tools you can use in your day to day work with young people, as well as in your own personal life. Get up to date information about adolescent brain development that refutes the previous model most of us are familiar with. This is learning every youth worker will benefit from. Register now!

This training aims to make it easier for youth workers to talk with young people about sexuality. Join us to explore how to think about sexuality as broader than risk prevention to expand the dialogue in more meaningful ways. You’ll learn some of the ways talking about sexuality benefits youth, and leave with specific and age-appropriate strategies to use when talking with young people about sexuality in your work.

Through a mix of lecture and online interaction, you’ll broaden your communication know-how to skillfully handle porcupines and prickly situations. You’ll gain confidence by learning to implement your own action plan for de-escalating and redirecting porcupines. Come ready to learn, laugh, and engage! You’ll leave with a new appreciation for porcupines.

Join us to explore tools and concepts of active listening combined with real youth work stories and experiences. You’ll go beyond theories to learn how to connect and communicate with young people about healthy choices in ways they’ll be more open to. You’ll learn how to talk with youth, how to effectively listen when they respond, and be able to give youth tools to expand their own ways of thinking to better understand themselves. You’ll also consider challenges youth, particularly youth of color, may face when making healthy choices and how to break down those barriers.

Join Nick Kleese for a unique perspective on how Improvisation is a Youth Work Superpower! Experiencing this training will leave you feeling empowered and better able to deal with any unexpected situation. You’ll definitely stretch yourself and discover new ideas for your programs. Let yourself play with improv in this safe learning environment and see where it may take you.

Many of the skills you’ll learn in this training will apply to both young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs) and those without. You’ll gain equitable sexual health strategies, resources, and confidence to address healthy relationships, consent, and boundaries with young people and young adults. You’ll learn a framework for answering difficult questions so you can respond to sexual behaviors in a positive way instead of worrying about saying something wrong.

This training will give youth workers techniques for fostering de-escalation, while deepening your understanding of the root causes of challenging behaviors. You’ll practice shifting from reactive responses, often rooted in your own histories of trauma, oppression, and privilege, to centered responses that make room for the unique experiences and needs of the youth in front of you. You’ll reflect on how to shift the practices of your programs away from punitive approaches and towards the individual and collective possibilities of conflict transformation.

Learning how to think outside the box will help you reframe your work and challenge those status quo assumptions. Design thinking skills will help you in your own life as well as in your work with youth. You can encourage youth to be open-minded and try new things by role modeling these creative design thinking strategies. Join us to learn how to communicate with youth in ways that promote intrinsic motivation, and consider how reframing the way you do your work to be more collaborative and creative is itself a form of self-care.

In this training, you will explore the importance of looking at the adult-youth relationship as cross-cultural. This includes thinking of our experiences and the culture we identified with as a youth. We will also discuss how to go beyond conversations that use phrases like “relaxation strategies” and learn to make room for The Avengers or Boggarts to achieve the same objective: to walk alongside a young person while they grow. This training is designed for any individual working with youth, regardless of setting (clinical or non-clinical, residential or community based).

Learn about the main concepts of Motivational Interviewing. You’ll gain tools for initiating change talk to help the young people you serve define and reach their goals. You’ll learn how to assess their readiness for change. Motivational Interviewing is a collaborative, youth-centered approach to strengthen a person’s own motivation and commitment to change. Every youth worker needs this skill set!

This training will help you understand the importance of defining positive youth outcomes in your work with young people through the lens of youth-adult partnerships. You’ll learn a framework for sharing power appropriately. You’ll explore strategies for implementing a youth-adult partnership approach in your programs. And you’ll come away with effective communication and relationship management skills to inform, empower, and engage young people.

Updated Considerations for Mandated Reporting will examine difficult questions. The aim is to help you employ a thoughtful decision-making process when you’re unsure what to do. We’ll review the law in general, and dig in on how to uphold your responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being of young people.

This training will raise your awareness about trafficking, give you insight to identify red flags and warning signs to watch for with the young people you serve, and equip you with strategies to support survivors. None of us can afford to say it isn’t happening here or to pretend it won’t happen here. All of us are needed now so please join us for this crucial training.

Through self-reflection and practice, anyone can become more skilled at building relationships. In this Interview-Style training, you’ll learn what makes relationships thrive in youth work, including building your character, maintaining congruency, a sense of trust, and appropriate self-disclosure.

You’ll learn about available resources to help you critically think through the process of reporting, as well as current terms and definitions to better understand reporting requirements. You’ll take a closer look at various MN child welfare agencies and their jurisdictions. Most importantly, you’ll be able to apply your knowledge of Minnesota’s mandated reporting procedures into the work you do every day.

Join us to build your skill in making ethically informed decisions around your online practices for connecting with youth. You’ll become aware of best practices for respecting boundaries and strategies to maximize your connections with young people. Through case studies, sharing ideas, and the personal experiences and perspectives of two high-school-age youth, you’ll sharpen your good judgment in relation to social media and mobile tech.

This training provides you with a fuller understanding of the multi-faceted process of resolving ethical challenges in your everyday work with young people. Using ethical dilemmas that frequently occur in youth programs, participants will examine the ethical principles and values that guide our work.

Join us to learn about African American Language (AAL), its origins, features, and patterns, and how young people use it in their daily lives. You’ll gain awareness and tools you can use to better connect with young people that use English differently than you might expect. The trainer will style-shift to demonstrate differences in dialect. By uncovering myths and biased attitudes around AAL, we can learn to engage respectfully so all young people feel like they belong.

This training will help you get energized, take practical action for meaningful change, and find hope. You’ll consider how the cycle of socialization shaped your identity and how to break the cycle. You’ll reframe your understanding of how long it takes to change behaviors around diversity, equity, and inclusion. You’ll be inspired to focus on what’s achievable when we each do our internal work. And together we can create positive change to support equity for the young people we serve.

This training will provide you with an understanding of terminology that will help define the LGBTQ experience as well as give you an awareness of when and how to use this sort of vocabulary appropriately. You’ll explore how privilege impacts the LGBTQ community. You’ll be challenged to think about barriers and opportunities within your organization in creating more inclusive programs. And you'll walk away with a deeper understanding of the LGBTQ community and items to consider when identifying ways your organization can best support LGBTQ youth as they interact with others in your program and in other environments.

Explore how to connect with the young people you serve in more meaningful, culturally responsive ways. You’ll work through cultural dynamics and learn how to advance the work you do to move beyond cultural competence to cultural intelligence. You will be more effective in your efforts to create inclusive programs that foster genuine equity. Even if you’ve worked on these concepts before, come explore this training for new insights because the work is never done.

This training will help you learn how to intentionally create safe and supportive environments that are inclusive to all. You’ll learn about gender identity, the differences between sex and gender, commonly held myths, and how to eliminate micro-aggressive language. You’ll leave with tools to support all youth to feel safe to be themselves with you and in your program spaces – no matter their gender identity. Are you in?

This training will give you a high-level understanding of the Hmong community so you can better incorporate cultural considerations into your programs. An increase in hate crimes directed at the AAPI community underscores the urgent need for youth workers to learn how to better serve Hmong American youth. Become a more effective advocate for Hmong American youth by examining their cultural background and beliefs. Raising your awareness will also help to dismantle the model minority myth.

This training will help you take a multicultural approach to understanding the experience of neurodiverse young people. You’ll expand your idea of what autism is. Being aware of what autistic youth experience, you can be a trusted and caring adult in their lives. Join us to gain strategies to better support autistic individuals. You’ll hear from an autistic adult how autism impacts them. You’ll be better prepared to help when an autistic youth faces barriers or challenges in your program.

Join us to learn how to better navigate the gravity of the deep, personal work for equity. Learn how you can overcome barriers, minimize harm, and hold space for difference in dialogue. You’ll explore how to find personal and professional access points to influence change. You’ll learn how to step into, start, and sustain equity work and continue your personal journey while affecting greater levels of change.

This training will increase your awareness of the link between historical and intergenerational trauma, community challenges, and effective engagement with the African American community. The trainer will discuss practical, culturally-sensitive, trauma-informed, outcome-driven best practices you can use in your work with youth.

Join Dr. Verna Cornelia Price to gain the tools and strategies needed to do this important work. You’ll find motivation and inspiration to increase your confidence. You’ll learn how to have productive and meaningful conversations about race and racism with your white friends, neighbors, other youth workers, and the youth in your programs. You’ll consider how racism affects your youth work, your wellbeing, and its impact on the youth you serve. You’ll have a safe space to ask questions and gain new insights.

Join us for a unique and eye-opening perspective. Through first-person narrative, photography, law, and statistics, We Are All Criminals seeks to challenge concepts of criminality and justice. Your trainer, Emily Baxter, brings a wealth of experience and expertise to deliver this thought-provoking subject in a clear and engaging manner.

Gain strategies to support young people who are learning how to trust and find safety in everyday life, when safety risks are very much realities. Improve your ability to communicate safety by maintaining your own regulation. Recognize how self-care strategies are vital to being more present to youth that have experienced trauma. This training will give you tools, deepen your understanding, and build your capacity to support young people who are experiencing and trying to navigate a profoundly intense world.

Join us to learn how to recognize the behaviors of survival-oriented youth as necessary adaptations for the challenges they face. You’ll challenge yourself to uncover how you, like many adults, may misinterpret youth survival thinking and behavior. You’ll gain practical methods for helping survival-oriented young people learn to adapt their resiliency skills for better results in school, work, and social settings.

Join us to hone your behavior management skills and develop your own personal style. From quick tempers to slow simmers, you’ll learn how you can help youth self-regulate. You’ll be able to apply many of these principles to working with groups of youth and understand the importance of maintaining behavior norms among groups as well as individual youth.

This training will ground you in the basics of restorative practices. You’ll learn why restorative justice is so vital to building systemic equity. You’ll also develop plans for addressing the behavior challenges that bring you the most discomfort in your daily work. You can’t dismantle generations of punitive mindsets in a two-hour training, but you can be awakened to the realities of the work ahead and gain tools to help youth believe in their capacity, self-worth, and voice.

In this training, you will develop a broader understanding of the causes of conflict. You’ll learn about the conflict cycle, the psychological elements that connect stressful events to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. You’ll gain tools and strategies to respond to challenging behavior and difficult situations. And you’ll be better equipped to de-escalate potential crisis situations.

This training offers a practical approach, grounded in brain science, mindfulness, and positive youth development. Discover how to calm intense behavior in the youth you serve, and gain ways to communicate with parents that will help motivate them to build on the work you do in your program to support their youth. Having more knowledge and skills to avoid frustration and stress will reenergize you for this important work.

This training will help you understand the impact of trauma on both youth and adults. You will practice regulating movement, breath work, relaxation techniques and social emotional activities to help youth build connection and a sense of safety in their body. Learn how these practices enhance emotional, physical and mental health. Be ready to move and be engaged. Walk away with useful strategies for the youth you serve.

This training will provide an overview of restorative justice principles and practices. You’ll learn about possible stumbling blocks you may encounter and how to overcome them. You’ll consider how you can bring restorative justice and a restorative mindset to your work with young people. Your efforts may take more time this way, but the positive collaboration leads to better outcomes for all.

In this training, you will build on your understanding of youth development, focusing on the importance of social and emotional skills. You’ll learn strategies to create SEL opportunities in any type of programming. And you’ll be strengthening your own ability to teach and model positive social and emotional skills. You may also have some fun along the way, so come and play!

This Interview-Style training will provide you statistics about young black youth and juvenile justice. You’ll also gain insight into how slavery continues to have an impact today, and learn about alternatives to detention through community support.

Learning what you can do to support young people experiencing labor trafficking is a vital part of the work you do to ensure the safety and well-being of all young people. In this interview-style training, you’ll learn from an expert in the field of labor trafficking, Bukola Oriola. Bukola is a survivor of labor trafficking and now a member of the International Survivors of Human Trafficking Advisory Council.

Watch this one hour QPR suicide prevention training to gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence to address warning signs and behaviors that signal imminent danger. QPR is the most widely taught gatekeeper training program in the United States and more than one million people have been trained. The youth you work with need you to be trained in suicide prevention.

This training will provide you with an understanding of the cycle of self-sabotaging behaviors. It will offer practical approaches that will prepare you to effectively support youth as they are working on changing behaviors. These strategies will help maintain that vital component in successful youth work, which is trust and respect between youth and youth worker.

This training will provide you with insight into common characteristics of system-involved girls so that you can better understand their unique needs. When you know how much relationships matter, you’ll be more effective in improving the long-term outcomes for girls. And you’ll learn how a strengths-based approach can provide girls the empowerment they seek.

Join us to learn about sex and labor trafficking exploitation. You’ll gain information about the laws and policies in Minnesota as well as the overall system structure for Safe Harbor. You’ll learn about the characteristics of at-risk youth, the tactics of traffickers and exploiters, common misconceptions about trafficking and exploitation, available resources, and best practices for working with youth. This training will include sample scenarios, information from a recent evaluation of the Safe Harbor system, and an opportunity for you to help shape the vision for a future free of trafficking and exploitation.

Through lessons learned in Minnesota by the Regional Prevention Coordinators, you’ll be able to apply proven substance abuse prevention skills in your own community. You’ll learn about effective protective factors, gain tools you can use, and explore practical action steps to apply in your youth programs. You’ll also be able to find and use local data to strengthen your own prevention efforts. By building coalitions in every community, we can all work together to prevent youth substance abuse and create long-term social change.

This training will provide up-to-date information about trends and the effects of drug and alcohol use/abuse on brain development. By taking this training you will increase your knowledge and confidence in your work and learn effective methods that help youth make positive choices about behaviors that affect their development.

Join us to explore the link between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the impact on youth development. You’ll explore the experiences, perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors that can hinder positive youth development. You’ll also dive into practical, trauma-informed, outcome-driven strategies. The ACE Study has many implications for your youth work and this training will help you build a solid foundation for incorporating trauma-informed responses to improve outcomes for young people.

This training will expand your current understanding of ADHD. Knowing the facts will help dispel old myths about ADHD causes so you can be a better resource for young people. You’ll be better able to appreciate the strengths of young people with ADHD and better equipped to address their unique challenges.

In this training you will learn how to effectively implement harm reduction in your interventions with youth. You’ll learn both the short and long-term effects of harm reduction strategies to support change over time. You’ll gain insight into the challenges you may face, including vicarious and first-hand trauma, as you work with youth through the stages of change. This is an emerging practice that all youth workers will benefit from. Join us for this important training.

Real Talk About Resilience will help you integrate growth for yourself and the young people you serve. You’ll explore different kinds of resilience and how they help or hinder dealing with adversity. You’ll learn about the Ripples of Resilience model as a method to facilitate self-awareness, truth telling, and power sharing. And you’ll be better able to support young people with healthy strategies to handle stress.

This training will deepen your understanding of how trauma-informed practices, toxic stress, cultural dynamics, and maintaining your well-being can be a practical approach to cultural competence. You’ll learn what Cultural Intelligence is and how you can apply it in your work to build resilience and support well-being for yourself and young people.

Plan to attend this important training. Anxiety is common with youth and this training will help you understand the common types you’ll encounter. After the training, you will know the warning signs and learn practical ways you can help youth manage their anxiety.

Jade Schleif, YIPA’s training coordinator, sat down for a very informative conversation with Lee Berlinquette, National Trainer for Mental Health First Aid. Lee shares her personal lived experience and deep professional knowledge to raise awareness about the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) movement. Her passion for helping you understand the importance of caring for youth mental health as well as your own makes this a unique learning experience. Listen in and learn how you can use MHFA concepts in your youth work.

Chris Shaw has the lived experience of mental health struggles to bring genuine insight to your learning. In this training, he’ll share his knowledge of effective strategies and resources so you can be better prepared. You’ll gain confidence in your ability to support youth facing mental health challenges. You’ll explore the mindset needed to recognize and respond to a young person experiencing a mental health crisis.

Join us to learn about the impact of historical trauma within indigenous communities. Learn how to support traditional recovery and healing practices, beyond western mental health approaches. You’ll be empowered through cultural skills and knowledge of historical trauma to better serve native youth. You’ll come away with knowledge of cultural healing and some culturally infused holistic healing practices to best support the health and wellbeing of indigenous youth.

Through mindfulness-based activities and discussions, you’ll gain a greater understanding of yourself, the impacts of toxic stress, and how to use those insights to better serve youth. You’ll learn about the four core elements of youth worker mental and emotional well-being, SEL, and how to protect yourself from moral injury. You’ll explore a research-based four step process, the Infinite Well-Being ModelTM, to learn how to metabolize stress in a way that energizes instead of depletes you. You’ll leave with a toolkit of practices to help you and the young people you serve build resiliency and mindfulness to better handle stresses in the moment.

By attending this training, you will gain a basic understanding of eating disorders. It is considered a primer for a more in-depth, in-person training previously held at Melrose Center, an eating disorder treatment center. Whether you just want the basics or prefer a deeper dive into eating disorders, sign up today.

This training will help frontline youth workers know what they can do within a framework of suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. You’ll explore suicide as a public health problem that can be addressed with the core principles of postvention to promote both healing and prevention. And you’ll gain resources to be more confident in partnering and referring to fully support young people in all respects.

In this training, you’ll learn how pre-prevention tools equip young people to deal with stressors better in the moment, and heal along the way. You’ll gain skills to recognize early warning signs. You’ll learn how to help youth build skills for coping in healthy and positive ways prior to feeling suicidal or depressed. It will become easier for you to talk with young people about suicide when you have the tools to help them develop the skills to manage the stresses that threaten their mental health and well-being.

In this training, you’ll learn about how depression develops in youth and how to identify warning signs. You’ll also gain strategies you can teach to the youth you serve so they can learn to manage their depression in healthy ways. Join us for this important training. You may be saving someone’s life.

Join us to gain valuable insight and a more expansive understanding about mental illness and mental health. Explore the concept of mental flourishing as a framework for better supporting your own mental health and a tool to help young people manage their mental health.

In this training, you’ll learn how to have healthy conversations on mental health and suicide, how to avoid harmful messages that might increase suicide risk in individuals, and why changing our language is an important first step in suicide prevention. You’ll gain skills to reduce stigma, mitigate risks, and promote help-seeking behavior. You’ll expand your knowledge of warning signs to look for, potential risk and protective factors connected with suicidal outcomes, and what to do when someone needs help.

You will be encouraged to examine your role in building a “new normal” where we have system accountability and thoughtfully designed programming for healing rather than harm for young people of color and other marginalized groups that experience ongoing harm from racialized and historical trauma.

Meditative Movements™ is an innovative technique that integrates easy to follow movements to improve self-care and self-regulation. The movements are adaptable to anyone’s physical ability and incorporate breathing strategies and spoken core value affirmations. You will explore the mind, body, and being connection and how it affects behavior. You will practice Meditative Movements™ that release harmful energies while increasing nurturing ones. As you become more aware, you will be better equipped to handle difficult situations. When emotions are heightened, you can redirect and deescalate behavior by performing Meditative Movements™ in the moment.