Youth Leaders Champion New Community Space to Support Mental Health

Situated between St. Johns High School and a public playground, a newly constructed labyrinth prepares to welcome the community of Clinton County. Thanks to funding, strategic planning and volunteer efforts from the Youth Advisory Council (YAC) at the Capital Region Community Foundation, the county will have a new space to gather, walk and reflect. The goal of the Labyrinth is to provide young people in the region a safe place to reduce stress and relax their minds.

The YAC seeks to make an impact for youth across Michigan’s capital region—Ingham, Eaton and Clinton Counties. High school seniors Nolan Koenigsknecht, Rachel Jackson and Callan Maxwell are among the Michigan teens leading and serving their community on Capital Region’s YAC. Maxwell also serves on CMF’s Board of Trustees.

Together with the rest of the council, they survey the needs of local youth and address them by making grants through the Youth Fund held at the community foundation. To guide their grantmaking, the YAC conducts a needs assessment every three years, surveying students in Ingham, Eaton and Clinton Counties to assess youth needs, sharing results with the schools they partnered with to the distribute the assessment.

“It’s helpful for us in our grantmaking, but it’s also helpful to those participating schools, just knowing and having more insight from the student voice and it’s all anonymous,” said LaToya Turner, Community Investment Officer and YAC Advisor at the community foundation.

Maxwell also added that the mix of students and communities helps keep equity centered.

“We just have such a diverse group of people, and so making sure that all schools are represented equally, and that we have the opinions of everybody that comes from different backgrounds, [so] when we’re granting out, we’re keeping in mind who we’re granting out to,” Maxwell said.

Having recently shifted the organizational structure of the YAC program from three separate YACs (one for each county) to one tri-county YAC, its grantmaking also shifted to a more proactive approach. Turner shared how it all unfolded, with an event the YAC hosted in Ingham County serving as the catalyst for both the grantmaking shift and the Labyrinth project.

In 2023, the YAC hosted Dodge the Stress— a dodgeball tournament to raise awareness of teen mental wellness. The event included workshops about managing stress and anxiety and encouraged different organizations to connect and discuss mental wellness among youth.

The deep and reflective dialogue that unraveled from the event stood out to YAC leaders as it aligned closely with the results and insights from the 2024 Youth Needs Assessment. Maxwell highlighted how mental health has been a consistent top issue among youth in its past two assessments.

Jackson shared how she didn’t find the assessment results surprising and added that academic stress was also included in the top issues youth are facing, noting how it ties into mental well-being.

“It wasn’t just one school, it was every single school that was affected by it,” Jackson said.

Koenigsknecht added that many of the other issues that youth are facing, like gun violence and substance use, can also be traced back to mental health.

“If we can focus on helping people with their mental health, then we can maybe help some of the other things from the needs assessment, too,” Koenigsknecht said.

One of the organizations that attended Dodge the Stress brought the idea of the Labyrinth to the table. Maxwell emphasized that while only so many organizations can receive funds, the YAC focuses on providing funds to organizations whose work can extend beyond the grant. Turner added that the Labyrinth is one of the grants that will continue to give back over time and remain a community resource for years to come.

Now in the final phases, the project is nearing completion with the YAC preparing for a community unveiling to celebrate the years of work and collaboration that went into the project. The Labyrinth will offer an accessible walking path, with mindfulness prompts along the way to encourage reflection, relaxation and mediation.

Koenigsknecht described, “It’s just kind of a release from the outside world, which is part of the reason why I like the Labyrinth so much, because it’s just a spot just for you to clear your mind and not think about anything else.”

The Labyrinth has been a labor of love between the YAC and community partners for several years, together striving to tackle the roots of youth mental health struggles.