Our Minds Matter is excited to finish another school year with our incredible network of mental health advocates. Our 2025–2026 Teen Advisory Council (TAC) has completed eight months of learning and project planning around teen mental health advocacy.
Teen Leader Summit and Beyond
TAC members started the second half of their tenure out strong with our Teen Leader Summit in March! The Summit brought together over 50 OMM student leaders and club members from across the DMV to meet and collaborate, uplifting the power of collective action and teen mental health advocacy.
(From left ot right) Ted, Gia, Lady, and Nare holding a paper chain of kindness and advocacy actions at the 2026 OMM Teen Leader Summit.
TAC members led interactive teen advocacy-focused sessions for their peers. TAC members Gia, Lady, Nare, and Ted led an informative hands-on activity, Kindness Chain Reaction, which showed how small acts of kindness can inspire acts of advocacy in one’s school or larger community. Participants took time to brainstorm small acts of kindness, like sharing their favorite music with a peer to cheer them up, and an action they can take to broaden their impact on their larger school community, like asking their school administration to play a mood-lifting playlist over the announcements.
Mikaela, Nushrat, and Shaelyn facilitated “Your Story, Your Change,” a session teaching students how to write testimonies advocating for mental health resources in their schools and local communities. Students learned the purpose structure of a written or spoken testimony, including how to safely share aspects of their personal mental health experience, incorporate local or national data, and make a clear call to action. Students left the Summit with plans to impact mental health at individual, school, and systemic levels, as well as plenty of new peer connections.💙
After the Summit, TAC members continued to design OMM curriculum content. Their Circle of Support Campaign encourages students and school staff to create a bulletin board sharing pictures of people and other things in their lives that help them feel supported. Additionally, to build upon the “Your Story, Your Change” session, members practiced writing their own testimonies. These individual testimonies ask local D.C. Metro council members to consider allocating funding toward peer-to-peer mental health programming in their respective counties.
(From left to right) Nushrat, Mikaela and Shaelyn leading their session at the Teen Leader Summit.
Members also continued their work with the Mental Health Coalition’s Safe Online Standards (S.O.S.) Task Force, contributing to a focus group about gaming culture among teens!👾 These spaces provide insight into how youth feel about current gaming platforms, how they can be made safer, and how certain aspects of gaming culture can impact teen mental health and wellness.
spotlighting teen Stories
As always, OMM is proud to collaborate with other organizations and advocates that center teen voices. Outside of the OMM Teen Leader Summit this spring, TAC members were in the spotlight at a few more mental health-related events.🎉
Lady speaking at Generation Be There Event in Washington, D.C.
In early April, Nare Harutyunyan, a junior at School Without Walls in Washington, D.C., attended the 2026 Hopkins India Conference alongside OMM CEO Lauren Anderson. The conference roundtable, titled “The Anxious Generation: Protecting Youth Wellbeing in a Digital World,” invited researchers, clinicians, youth advocates, policymakers, and young people from the U.S. and India to discuss growing mental health crises in youth amid rising online engagement. Evidence shows significant declines in well-being among young adults globally, particularly around loneliness, emotional regulation, and social disconnection.
Additionally, earlier this month, two TAC members — Shaelyn Clark, a senior at Eastern High School in Washington, D.C., and Lady Nyarko, a senior at West Potomac High School in Alexandria, VA — attended Born This Way Foundation’s Generation Be There Event: A Night of Connection, Community, and Action. The campaign aims to train an entire generation in how to safely and effectively support one another by earning their Be There Certificate. This free, self-paced training outlines skills for supporting someone struggling with their mental health. The event brought together young people, community organizations, and local leaders for meaningful conversation, connection, and action in support of youth mental health.
Gearing Up for Summer and Seeing Goodness
Finally, TAC members completed their tenure by preparing for mental health change in their next chapters. During the final quarterly meeting, members learned how to format and update their resumes for any future opportunities. This meeting was also a space for members to share their thoughts on their Summit experiences and reflect on how TAC has helped them grow.😊 Members shared that being on TAC has helped improve their public speaking skills, allowed them to see project ideas come to life, and better understand the work of Our Minds Matter.
The spring has also been a chance for TAC to get to know OMM team members better through virtual “coffee” chats. These casual conversations help encourage deeper connection and professional development for our student leaders.
Our Minds Matter’s work would not be possible without the passion, efforts, and perspectives of the teens we serve. We are incredibly grateful to this year’s TAC cohort for their willingness to share their stories and demonstrate the value of teen advocacy in action. Team OMM wishes all 2025–26 members the best of luck as they continue their final year of high school or first year of college.🍀
Interested in learning more about TAC for next year? Look out for updates on how to get involved in the fall! Special thanks for supporting Our Minds Matter go to The J. Willard & Alice S. Marriott Foundation; Kettering Family Foundation; The MATTIE Fund; Rosendin Foundation; Van Metre Companies; and our supporter community of mental health champions like you.🫂
TAC members at this year’s Teen Leader Summit!⭐️