YOUTH VOICES
SPEAK OUT 2026
Utilize this powerpoint to better understand the competition, to answer your questions, and to have the best chance of winning in February!
Projects that follow the rules and touch on the theme have the best chances of winning big prizes!
Rubrics, Examples & Ideas
Sections (click titles to jump to that topic)
Youth Voices Speak Out is a showcase and competition that empowers students to share, research, & teach about the power that humans have to bounce back from mental health challenges.
The event ran from 2017 - 2019 and then had a break during COVID, restarting in 2022.
YVSO has always been a partnership between the school district and community organizations, and it has grown every year. started by Pastor Dick Pacheco and Derrick Cook in order to challenge students to learn about how to help to improve their own mental health, and then share that with their community!
History of Youth Voices Speak Out
Event Co-Founder
Pastor Dick Pacheco
Empower students to engage with their own mental health challenges, see other students problems, and learn to heal and move forward.
Connect the community to organizations and mental health resources in a space that is safe, accepting and affirming.
Inspire those in the audience and provide projects to learn more about, engage with, learn from, and support mental health organizations. Inspire our community to talk more openly about their mental health challenges
Celebrate the talent of our students as artists, storytellers, speakers, and as resilient and capable people who have the ability to heal and thrive after challenges.
Purpose of Youth Voices Speak Out
Trifold Explainer
Trifold Explainer
Side 2
Project
Timelines
Youth Voices Speak Out 2026 Rules
What is Resilience? Why is it the event’s focus?
By creating a mental health competition that focuses on resilience and sharing tools, we hope we can help each student learn tools that will help themselves and share those tools with others!
Check Out These Resilience Links
Tips for Building Resilience
Coping Strategies That Build Resilience
15 COPING SKILLS FOR DEPRESSION
We often believe that depression is something that we suffer with for long periods of time. Medication is not the only solution and is often just a temporary solution to help with depression. Instead, there are many coping skills for depression you can gain and practice throughout your journey for improved mental health. Each skill aims to provide solutions to depression. This list offers practical solutions for depression that can be used as preventative measures or during the height of a depressive episode.
Be open-minded and understand that taking action sparks reaction. Be kind and patient with yourself.
COPING SKILLS FOR DEPRESSION
The following tips aim to bridge these connections in the brain and holistically heal those suffering from depression. Some tips provide immediate relief, while others take time. When depression is a life-long condition, the time and effort put into relieving symptoms is well worth it.
1. Get Moving: The body was not designed for an inactive lifestyle. So while it’s not new information that exercising is good for the body and mind, it deserves recognition because the effects are substantial.
Release of endorphins- Starting the habit of aerobic and anaerobic exercise is probably not what a depressed person wants to hear. Depression creates low energy levels, so mustering up the courage and energy to perform physical activity can seem impossible. But, the practice works like a ripple effect, and once you take the initial step, momentum gathers, and you’ll gain more energy from working out that translates further into your daily life.
Plus, mentally, it feels good to take care of the body and treat it well. Even after a small workout, a yoga session, or walk, a small amount of self-love is gained from performing a positive activity.
2. Meditate: Meditation is a form of training the mind to be more aware, alert, and calm. It teaches you that you can let go of your thoughts, and your identity does not have to be rooted in what you think and feel.
The effects of meditation will subtly manifest themselves in your life until you begin to look forward to meditating, no matter which form you choose.
3. Connect with Nature: Whatever your favorite outdoor activity is, do that. Invite friends or go alone.
Even if it feels uncomfortable, daily sunlight is necessary for human beings to function optimally. Almost 50% of adults in the United States are vitamin D deficient.
4. Diet: A key component in combating depression is making sure your body is full of nourishment. Since inflammation is a common cause of depressive symptoms, eliminating pro-inflammatory foods (like sugar) from your diet is vital.
The connection between gut health and the brain is highly prevalent. The gut is considered the body’s second brain as it contains 200 million cells in the gastrointestinal tract. This second brain comprises the enteric nervous system (ENS).
A happy gut is a happy brain. To achieve a healthier gut, focus on a less processed diet. Add whole foods that nourish the body. Eating probiotics in fermented foods will heal the gut.
5. Journaling
Thought dumping into a journal is a beautiful way of releasing pent-up energy, emotions, and thoughts fueling your depression. When we have trauma or un accessible feelings stored in the body, they cause energy blockages. These blockages need to be released somehow. Journaling is a great way to let your mind free itself of anything, causing it not to think clearly. Thought-dumping, or writing whatever comes to mind with no concern for what it will sound like, allows you to let go of thoughts that no longer serve you.
6. Affirmations
Be aware of the media we consume.
If we are constantly around negative people, involving ourselves in toxic relationships, or consuming violent, negative media, our subconscious mind soaks up that information like a sponge and reacts negatively.
Avoid media that is damaging to the spirit. If that means you have to stop reading or watching the news, so be it. Positive Autosuggestion comes into play by reprogramming these negative thought patterns we have grown to believe.
7. Protecting Your Energy
Protecting your energy goes along with watching what kind of media you are consuming. If you constantly surround yourself in harmful and toxic situations or with friends and family that don’t have your best interest at heart it damages the mind/body.
When you find yourself feeling drained, take time to recharge. Grounding yourself can look like many different things. A self-care night, time in nature or meditation can all be effective ways to rid yourself of other people’s energy and center yourself again.
8. Getting Creative and Having Grace
It is human nature to be creative.
Nowadays, everything has become so competitive. It seems that someone can’t genuinely enjoy a hobby without needing to capitalize it or show it off on social media. Feeding into this pressure can cause unnecessary turmoil and be detrimental to the psyche. Having grace is a skill that needs to be built upon, like any other skill. Practicing being lenient with yourself helps you feel more comfortable. Grace is usually missing in people with depression, who tend to be so hard on themselves.
Try creating and doing something you love with zero pressure. Having no expectations is healthy when it comes to doing relaxing hobbies.
Drawing, embroidery, painting, playing a musical instrument, and so much more activities are great for activating the right side of the brain. The left side of the brain is associated with logic and analytics, which is where we spend more of our time.
Creative endeavors help to switch the brain over to the right side. The right side of the brain dims the constant thoughts associated with anxiety and depression.
9. Sleep
Some of the most noticeable effects of depression are on the sleep cycle. Depression can cause people to oversleep or have insomnia. Sometimes, it’s a combination of both – sleeping all day, staying up all night.
Natural detox mechanisms occur during sleep; that is why it is vital to our bodies’ health to establish a restorative sleep cycle.
10. Minimize Technology
Our phones do this lovely thing where we see how much screen time we used for the week. It can be scary when we see it’s more than 4 hours. Realistically, that’s so much time spent on technology. It isn’t even mentioning other screens we use, such as laptops or television. The reality is blue light is harsh on the body. It isn’t natural to be constantly plugged in. Disciplining yourself by not allowing yourself to check social media, watch tv, or whatever it may be all day long helps you find other things to fill your time that are more meaningful.
11. Declutter Your Space
The external world is a reflection of our inner world. Living in a space that is cluttered, messy, and unclean leaves us feeling depleted, depressed, and anxious. Deep clean your closet, furniture, and anything else you’ve been neglecting to clean out. Getting rid of old stuff that no longer suits your needs makes the spirit feel relieve
12. The Power of Magnesium
Magnesium is responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of biological processes. It aids sleep quality, mood regulation, and is an anti-inflammatory, to name a few benefits. Magnesium directly helps in coping with depression.
13. Non-Attachment
Practicing non-attachment helps to alleviate some of the negative spiraling involved in depressive moods. When we let go of our expectations of what we think life should look like and embrace the unknown, we have the opportunity to overcome obstacles more easily. Non-attachment doesn’t mean eliminating emotions entirely. Emotions are healthy. Non-attachment means feeling the emotions in the present moment but not letting them linger too long.
14.Connect
Connect with family, friends, activities, hobbies, school, work and faith. Isolation decreases activity and feeds depression. Healing happens through connectivity and activity, getting involved with others focusing on something other than our pitiful selves and allows the brain neurochemicals to rebalance.
15. Therapy
Talk to a therapist when self-help isn’t enough. Many types of therapy help you transition into different stages of your life and your depression. I’ve found that consistently seeing a therapist even when depression is not at its height works to improve mindset.
What does the Theme mean?
“The essential idea behind reframing is that the frame through which a person views a situation determines their point of view. When that frame is shifted, the meaning of that situation changes, and thinking and behavior often change along with it.”
Learn more about the theme by reading the articles or watching the videos on the right side of the slide and think about how you can use these lessons, definitions, and methods in your project
VIDEOS
How people can use reframing to deal with negative thoughts
A video that explains simply explains Reframing in a work place setting
A Video that shares a process of how to reframe something
A TED Talk from a neuroscientist and child psychologist explains Reframing
ARTICLES
A Definition of Reframing - From Very Well
An Article on Emotional Intelligence and Cognitive Reframing from the American Foundation for Family Physicians:
This year’s theme: The Art of Reframing is about how we reframe mental health challenges in our own minds.
How can I use the theme artistically?
This year’s theme is one that is GREAT for artistic expression. No matter the subject or type of project you choose applying reframing is a fun way to make your submission more interesting or artistic.
Ideas for how you can use the theme in your submission:
Project Scales: Personal Scale
Tell a story about yourself (or someone very close to you) who had success finding resilience, or who used reframing to help change their perspective, to help to them move forward, heal, regain confidence, and have success.
Share about how the failure involved a mental health struggle and what kind of ways you/they were able to understand, to build coping mechanisms, and to move on from the mental health challenge.
1. DO NOT SHARE ANY INFO THAT INVOLVES ILLEGAL ACTIVITY
While we are so proud of those who have come through difficult situations like addiction to illegal substances - please refrain from sharing any information about yourself or your family that has not yet been through the legal process and is not public knowledge.
2. DO NOT SHARE INFORMATION ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT
We live in a small community and this event is about building pride in healing, and not about putting anyone out.
Project Scales: Personal Scale Continued: TWO IMPORTANT NOTES
Project Scales: Community Scale
Organizations in Moab Area to Highlight: (click on titles to learn more)
Project Ideas:
Project Scales: Community Scale
Project Scales: National/Global Scale
Project Scales: National/Global Scale
Useful Links for Projects:
bullets to link to their websites!)
Ideas:
Project Types: Digital or Art Posters
Choose between making a poster yourself using a digital program to create a visual representation and share what reframing and building resilience looks like to you!
When posters are completed - share your poster's meaning by writing a minimum one paragraph explanatory label about what your design means and why you chose the elements you did.
Posters must be 12 x 18 - Get paper from your school’s art teachers or Mr. Spaulding at the middle school.
Rubric: Click here
Ideas:
Examples of Posters
Project Types: Performances
Create a performance that shares a lesson around resilience in the face of a mental health misstep at a personal, community, or global level and share it at the event. Performances must be five minutes or less and can be solo or performed as a group.
Rubric: Click here:
Ideas:
Project Types: Videos
Students can create a 3 minute (or shorter) video to tell a personal story about resilience. The story should follow the same format looking at resilience in the face of a mental health issue personally, locally, or at a larger scale and focus on sharing how to overcome mental health challenges. Students can work together in a group of up to five.
Examples of Videos (click on the titles)
Project Types: Essays
Rubric: Click Here
Ideas:
Write a five paragraph essay that tells the story of resilience in the face of a mental health challenge.
Choose one of the scales and go in depth to share how you were impacted by a mental health issue!
Project Types: Creative Choice
Rubric: Click here
Ideas:
Do you have an idea for a different type of project that you don’t see listed? Want to sculpt? Create a ceramic piece? Create a photo essay? Create a multimedia art piece?
To compete with a creative choice project you have to get approval from Derrick Cook at the HS, from one of the art teachers, or from Jeremy Spaulding the district’s community coordinator. You also have to write two paragraphs for submission that explain your piece and why its features represent the theme.
Examples of Creative Choice
Pete Olsen’s
Debate Project
Cash and Prizes
Cash and prize amounts will be announced in early January.