The Problem
Youth are struggling with a dearth of hope and a lack of the necessary skills to be successful and happy in adult life.
The Problem
Youth are struggling with a dearth of hope and a lack of the necessary skills to be successful and happy in adult life.
The Solution
Equipping Youth for Adult Life-Work Success and nurturing hope and optimism for their futures.
From humble beginnings, hoping to improve outcomes for a relatively small number of adolescent youth in the foster care system in Virginia Beach, the Together We Can Foundation has evolved to serve over 1500 youth per year with specific risk factors for disconnection across Hampton Roads and Southeastern Virginia.
Through an evidence-based research and best-practices approach, our initial successes with youth suggested that when we focused not on survival skills (a kind of emergency triage of skills) but rather on the top-level skills that all successful adults need, youth responded positively and began to make better choices in their own lives.
Our Focus Areas
Through our in-person training programs, online course, and printed resources, we emphasize the critical importance of:
- Self Awareness. If you don’t know yourself, you can’t identify a career path and plan effectively, and you cannot promote your best assets to an employer.
- A Vision. If you don’t know what you want or where you want to go, no one can really help you.
- A Plan. If you don’t have a detailed plan with actionable steps, the most inspiring vision becomes just a daydream.
- Grit, Resilience, and Mental Flexibility. Nothing worth having comes easy. It takes a purpose that inspires the passion to persevere, the ability to bend and not break in the face of life’s challenges, and the ability to respond creatively to trauma and setbacks.
- A Support Network. Successful people know that their success is due in page measure to the people who believed in them and helped them in key moments.
Our Service Regions
What we are able to offer varies depending on whether we are working in our direct service area of Hampton Roads and Southeastern Virginia (live, in-person courses, Smart Guides for youth or Smart Transitions Online) or whether we are serving a larger community of caring adults and agencies across the country who are trying to serve the youth they work with as they struggle with the transition to adult life (Smart Guides for Youth, Smart Transitions Online, and Smart Transitions Instructor Certification Training).
Within the Hampton Roads Service Area
Programs and resources focused on local youth populations with the highest risk factors for disconnection, delivered through schools, agencies, and community partners.
