Hello and Goodbye! By Clare Ryan, YIPA’s former Promise Fellow and Rachel Ayoub, YIPA’s new Promise Fellow

GOODBYE FROM CLARE
A year has gone by already?

Yes, it was just about a year ago that I (Clare) started fiddling around on Blogger for the first time and ended up with this blog. I am so grateful to all of the amazing people who have contributed to this collection over the year! If you want to know what YIPA has been up to, reading though old posts is a great way to catch up and hopefully learn something new in the process. The best part for me was getting to talk to so many of YIPA’s members and hear about the exciting things that they are doing for youth in Minnesota.

Being YIPA’s first AmeriCorps Promise Fellow has been an extraordinary experience. YIPA’s staff – Scott, Jessi, and Chris – are inspiring people who have put years of hard work into making Minnesota a better place for young people. They have the constantly challenging job of figuring out how to bring together diverse organizations from across the state, give them the training and support they need, advocate for them collectively and provide all of these services for as low a cost as they possibly can. It was an honor to be able to help in some small way this year.

Luckily, I am leaving this blog and my other responsibilities in the very capable hands of YIPA’s new Promise Fellow Rachel. It is my great pleasure to introduce Rachel to all of you and let her write a few words of introduction.

GREETINGS FROM RACHEL

Greetings loyal readers and helpful contributors! I (Rachel Ayoub) am happy to announce that I am the newest member of the YIPA family! I’m very much looking forward to my year of service as an AmeriCorps Promise Fellow, and am eager to find my niche in the field early early intervention. I thank Clare for passing the torch on to me, and trusting me to continue on with the wonderful work she started both with the KidsChange blog, as well as with her work in the area of best practices and evaluation processes in early intervention. Over the course of the next year, I will be using this blog to provide useful tools, helpful resources, relevant articles, interviews and personal testimonies that speak to the effectiveness of early intervention both within our communities and nationwide and give youth service providers concrete tools to help them do their jobs with youth more efficiently and effectively.

You may be wondering what qualities and experiences I bring to the table, and how I anticipate these will carry over into my year of service with YIPA. In brief, I am a 2007 graduate of St. Catherine University, where I earned a degree in Social Work. I will begin studying full-time at Augsburg College where I plan to earn a Masters degree in Social Work with a concentration in Multicultural Clinical Practice. I spent the last two years living in South Korea and working as a middle school English teacher. I also have experience working with children in the Child Protection System, as well as extensive experience with the adoption community. I have co-facilitated children’s groups focused around family, adoption, culture and identity. I am a product of the Minneapolis public school system and am very passionate about working to help at risk youth and their families stay on track!

Because I am new to this, I ask that you please help me steer this conversation towards those issues that are most valuable to you. If you have an idea for a topic, a question that you would like to ask the youth intervention community or a specific contributor, or if you have a story of your own to share I welcome you to email me at promisefellow@mnyipa.org , or leave a comment on this post. I look forward to learning more about the amazing work being done in this community!