It only takes one caring adult to change everything.

One caring adult can impact a youth in such a positive way that it changes the trajectory of their lives.

In social work circles there is a common test to understand the impact of trauma on a young person’s life. It is called ACEs, adverse childhood experiences. They say two is a lot. I have 10, but the story doesn’t end here.

There is also a measure of the resiliency that a youth has. If the youth has a higher resiliency score they lessen the negative impacts that trauma causes on youth.  I have all of the resiliency measures. See, resiliency beats trauma every time.

What is awesome is most of the measures of resiliency are something one caring adult can give to a youth, or help them to access. They are things like showing value in school, having someone to talk about how you feel, having someone know what makes you happy or sad, telling them what they are good at and someone for youth to inspire to be like. You can do all of that for a youth.

Think back, who was that one adult for you? Was it a coach or a teacher? Or was it the parents of one of your best friends? Maybe it changed over the years. You can give back to youth right now in the same way.

It is one of the basic youth needs, to simply have a significant quality relationship with just one adult. Josh Shipp, and our friends at Orange, get this. Leverage everything you have as an adult to impact the life of just one young person. There is power in it.

It can change everything.

You can change everything.