INDIVIDUALS NOW INC dba SOCIAL ADVOCATES FOR YOUTH

Social Advocates for Youth provides support, opportunities and hope to children, youth and families.

At SAY we focus on four core areas: crisis stabalization, housing, counseling and careers. Through these programs SAY gives youth the tools they need to become stable and able to rise to life's challenges and opportunities.

Through our surveys with homeless youth and our 53 years of experience, we know that for a youth's life-course to be altered they need the foundation of safe and stable housing, counseling to repair childhood trauma, and education and employment to sustain their independence. Therefore SAY has three areas of focus: housing, counseling and careers. SAY provides the following direct services to youth and young adults: emergency shelter, and short term and long term housing, counseling, valuable work experience, job readiness skills, resume preparation, life skills instruction, educational services, mentoring, tattoo removal, and prosocial activities. We are the only organization that serves homeless youth in our community; we operate the only teen and youth adult shelters in Sonoma County and are the only agency offering affordable housing specifically for homeless youth.

During SAY CEO Matt Martin's tenure he increased SAY's unrestricted funding 317%, maintained a remarkable level of community engagement, and made the youth homelessness dialogue a hot topic. SAY COO Katrina Thurman formerly served as Executive Director of the Community & Family Service Agency, representing the 2011 merge of West County Community Services and Family Service Agency of Sonoma County. SAY's staff is over 125 professionals, many with advanced degrees in counseling and social work.

SAY has established relationships with 200 partnering agencies to address the needs of youth and families in Sonoma County. In addition to participating in the coalitions which serve runaway and homeless youth, we partner with County government and other sectors to provide upstream, preventive interventions to youth to develop the external assets and community of support needed to help youth build self-sufficiency and strong links to broader community resources. We partner with Child Protective Services, Santa Rosa Police Department, Sonoma County Juvenile Probation, Sonoma County Mental Health & Psychiatric Emergency Services, YWCA domestic violence shelter, foster youth and group home providers and many other partners.

SAY Accomplishments:
We work with a coalition of organizations to provide counseling, youth employment, transitional, and emergency support to children, youth, and their families desperately in need. We have also made solutions to youth homeless a hot topic in Sonoma County, helping shine light on the need of our homeless teens and youth and calling attention to the fact that SAY offers teens a continuum of care: housing, counseling, and jobs.

Our team of outstanding professionals is accomplished and varied. Our staff members have extensive experience in therapeutic modalities and treatment modalities. We utilize evidence-based and evidence-informed practices throughout our work with youth and families.

SAY CEO Matt Martin won the North Bay Business Journal Nonprofit Leadership Award in 2012 and the North Bay Leadership Council for the “Caught In the Act of Leadership" award in 2016 and both Matt and SAY COO Katrina Thurman won the “40 Under 40 Outstanding Young Business Leader" award from the North Bay Business Journal in 2011. SAY's Chief Development Officer, Cat Cvengros, won this distinguished award in 2014.

Furthermore, SAY believes youth input is necessary and we invite their participation. For instance, youth feedback informed our current outreach team composite for working on the streets. This is why our five-member street outreach team includes one lead adult and four street outreach Youth Workers. We responded to this feedback by trying out this model and noticed immediately that runaway and homeless responded better to their peers. This strategy provides opportunities for peer mentoring, belonging, and healthy close interpersonal relationships.