Life at YESS

After seven years as our intrepid President and CEO, Margo Long will be stepping away from YESS. Her last day will be September 15, and until then we will be relishing our time with her as…

When thinking about the connection between school and youth support, it is most often seen through the lens of drop-out rates, behavioural concerns, and “alternative” school paths. When youth are experiencing homelessness or are experiencing trauma within the home, they are less likely to be stable within the classroom and their behaviours are often mistaken for requiring punitive consequences rather than seen through the lens of needing help. Youth who experience uncertainty will have trouble adjusting to routine and structure and have a hard time focusing on what is being asked of them. Youth who are living rough will change schools several times in their adolescence and remain disconnected from a healthy learning trajectory and the path to full education becomes harder to reconnect with.

Holistic support is vital for youth in education because it ensures they are healthy, emotionally balanced, mentally focused, and culturally grounded. We are an intricate combination of our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and cultural needs, and in our educational journey, we cannot cut off part of ourselves. For true success, we must include all aspects of a person. Addressing these diverse needs helps students stay engaged, reduces dropout rates, and improves academic performance by creating a more inclusive and supportive learning environment that promotes overall wellbeing.

When a young person is facing a crisis, their world can feel like it’s unraveling. Whether it’s the instability of their living situation, the uncertainty of their future, or the immediate pressures of day-to-day survival, these challenges can create a storm of emotions and behaviors that seem insurmountable. As caregivers, educators, and supporters, our role is to provide stability and understanding to the young people in our lives.

Hi! My name is Marc Majeau, and I’m a Development Officer with Youth Empowerment and Support Services. I’ve been with YESS since 2022.

The YESS Executive Leadership team is excited to welcome a new and critical member to the YESS team. Joyce LaBriola is YESS’ first Chief Development Officer. This role has been created to help YESS achieve its bold vision to provide better and lasting outcomes for Edmonton youth in crisis. Her proven track record of providing valuable insights, results and strategic impact, will benefit YESS as an organization and the many youth we help each year.

As humans, we tend to use language to describe hard things in a way that is both easy and digestible. Shelter has been the easiest word to describe the complex support that individuals experiencing houselessness need. It is easy for us to think that the answer to not having shelter is to provide shelter. It is also easy to use shelter as the umbrella term to connect services across a large sector and make it easier to fund, explain, or support.

Parents often run through several “nightmare” scenarios in their heads when they cannot communicate with their child: one of the worst possibilities is that their child is missing. The mental pathways and fears that come up are fuel to an already anxiety-driven situation. As a mother myself, I have lived through the fears and the pain and the confusion and the desperation that parents go through when a child is missing. Nothing short of seeing my child in person, hugging them and telling them I love them will quell those feelings.

Young people are developmentally working to define their own identity and purpose and connections. Finding purpose and meaning in the world is a large concept that our youth do not always have capacity to delve into in their time with us; however, for those who are connected or building that connection, we want to foster their curiosity, experimentation, and beliefs so that they can feel safe to explore themselves within the larger world.