Monday, August 18, 2008

OHIO YAB Youth Track: Registration Deadline August 29th, 2008

OHIO YAB will be hosting their 2nd Annual one day Youth Track at the PCSAO Conference on Thursday September 18th, 2008. This is a great opportunity for youth to be able to attend an in-state conference with national presnters. Workshops include Foster Care 411 (FosterClub), What’s Love Got to Do With It (National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancies), and Making a Difference for our Brothers and Sisters from Care (Foster Care Alumni of America). Registration is limited to 45 youth between the ages of 14 and 23 who are currently in foster care or have experienced foster care.

The registration fee is only $50 and child welfare professionals who are attending the PCSAO Conference the same day can assist with transportation! For more information about this exciting opportunity please check out the website (pages 12 &13).

Don’t let this exciting possibility pass you by—the registration deadline is August 29th, 2008.
Another thing to consider is that youth, who are members of OHIO YAB, can apply for the OHIO YAB Youth Leadership Program to have either 50% or 100% of their registration fees covered.

Feel free to pass along this great opportunity to others who may be interested.

If you have any questions feel free to email me at kelly@pcsao.org

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Learning a New Skill

As part of OHIO YAB's ongoing efforts to improve both communication and collaboration I met with Lisa Dickson, Foster Care Alumni of America, this past Friday to be introduced to the "blogging world."

The idea of an OHIO YAB blog was suggested by Lisa at the last OHIO YAB Statewide Meeting as a tool that both youth and adult supporters could use to keep updated regarding OHIO YAB events, opportunties and news. Lisa quickly create a OHIO YAB blog to allow us at PCSAO to become more familiar with what she was talking about. It was exciting to see all the possiblities that a blog could provide for OHIO YAB.

However I was a bit intidimated by the aspect of maintaing a blog for OHIO YAB so Lisa kindly agreed to take time out of her busy day to show me the world of blogging. Lisa came prepared, as always, with a quick cheat sheet on how to best maintain the blog. She provided me with a couple quick lessons and I think a new wonderful OHIO YAB endeavor has been born. Lisa also agreed to share with OHIO YAB the great pics she has been taking over the past couple years of OHIO YAB members, taught me a thing of two about Goggle alerts and introduced me to a Wiki.

Lisa also shared some of the projects she has been involved with during the past couple of months and the conferences she plans on partcipating and presenting at in the future. Lisa's energy and drive is impressive and OHIO YAB is thankful to have her a partner.

So I hope that this blog becomes a way for us all to connect regarding not only OHIO YAB but other foster youth related news and events across of Ohio. If you have something you would like to see posted or shared on here just send me an email at kelly@pcsao.org.