Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to into the Fold, the podcast of the Hogg foundation for Mental Health. I'm Vicki Coffey. I'm the director of foundation initiatives and I'm so glad to be with you as we continue this season's theme, Mental Health in navigating change and building resilience for the first time, I'm co hosting the podcast along with the familiar voice, Ike Evans, our communications manager for for the Hogg foundation for Mental Health. Hi, Ike.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Hi, everyone.
Like Vicki said, we are calling this episode Children of Change. And we thought that this was a big enough topic in 2025 for two podcast hosts to take on. And so I'm really thrilled that Vicki will be co shouldering the hosting duties for this conversation that we are about to have.
Our guest for today is Sean Kent of the AMLA Foundation, a former grantee partner of the Hogg Foundation.
Amela provides mental health programs for both youth and adults. We could think of no better conversation partner for this topic. Sean, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:01:09] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you. It's good to be with you guys.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: So, Sean, just to start this conversation off, I'm just real curious. What are the primary challenges that young people face in today's fast changing world?
[00:01:22] Speaker C: Oh my gosh, there's so many.
There's a lot of challenges.
We're dealing with massive social transitions. We've got all these digital transitions that are affecting the way kids interface with their learning, with their social lives, with their families. Right. We have these massive social changes. The social conflicts that we're kind of in the middle of the are disturbing and they're apparent to kids as they get older. Some of the younger kids are a little bit aware of them. Not as much, but the older kids are definitely. And the large scale global changes and challenges that we're facing are very much apparent to my teenagers to the point where a lot of them have a sense of hopelessness about how things are flowing.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. And so just how growing up in a world marked by constant change and unpredictability, it affects everyone's emotional well being. And I can imagine just with young people it's impacting them as well.
[00:02:25] Speaker C: It is, I think a lot in terms public mental health has always been like a passion of mine. I think a lot of terms in the concept of allostatic load, and that's the cumulative wear and tear of the nervous system attempting to adapt to changes and challenges. And the more you throw at the nervous system, the more pressure that you put under it, the more wear and tear you get. On the nervous system. When I think of all the things that kids and families are struggling with right now and all the transitions that we're going through on top of the stuff that we're already dealing with, it really concerns me for our young people.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: So I want to chime in that I know that both of y' all are parents and, and I myself do not have any kids.
And so, I mean, just listening to, I think the beginning of your first response, Sean, about everything that's going on in the world.
I remember being young and nervous though, and I know as parents trying to find the right balance between shielding and being very realistic with your kids about, about what's happening in the world around them that you won't always be there to shield them from. And just, I'm just loving, I'd just love to have some sense of what form those conversations take for y' all and what things you try to stress when it comes to that.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: I mean, in my case, my little girls are six, so there's just a lot that they're not gonna be able to understand, quiet or be aware of. I try to be as honest as possible at the, at an appropriate level for their age.
The things I try to really focus on are long term. I look at the way my kids are developing and I look at the way our family system is working and I try and set things up in a way that are going to support their well being in the long term because I know I can't shield them from the world, but I can, I should say, let them grow up in nutritious soil.
And so my long term goals are kind of just setting things up. Like we try to eat dinner at the table as a family.
We do check ins when we have dinner as a family. The research has been pretty clear that just eating together as a family at the table has really strong long term outcomes for how your kids turn out.
Little things like that. I try to make sure that they have multiple community relationships, so relationships with lots of friends and peers because once again, the more connections that they have to work with as they grow up, the healthier they're going to be.
The other thing that I've been really trying to set up for my kids is all kids need a third space, right? So you've got school, you've got home, and then you need at least some sort of third space where you get to do cool things, meet people and enculturate. So they're in the Girl Scouts.
That's currently our third space. It could Be church. It could be any community like that. But you need a third space to support your kids as they develop and grow. And so I've been working really hard just to kind of.
To make sure that they have all those things in place.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Okay, so yours are twins. Did I hear that right? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: And for me, my son's an adult now, but I remember with him growing up that I tried to create a space for him where he could make mistakes.
And recognize that you learn from. Those are lessons learned. Right. Like, you have the opportunity to test out some things, and if they work, great, and if they don't, let's talk about it. What didn't work for you, and how did that impact you? And how did that impact your relationships with your friends and with your family? And so now, as an adult, it's a little bit more of a mentorship, and I would say kind of a friendship in that I have to step back as a parent and recognize that he may do things that I may not agree with, and I have to support his choices. And so it's a little different because I want to say at some point, why would you do that? That doesn't make sense. But again, as an adult, he has the opportunity to make choices on his own, and I support those choices. So I feel that I'm more in the supporting actress role than I was growing up, kind of as the.
In the parental role. And so just creating space for conversation and for communication to be open. And I've always been the type of parent where you can ask me anything. It may be hard for me to answer, and I may stumble a little bit and think, oh, my God, why did you ask me that? I don't want to talk to you about that. But I've always opened that door. So just happened to have that space where him and his friends would come to those with those difficult questions that they were sometimes afraid to ask their parents, or their parents would say, go ask Vicki. So. Because I didn't have a problem talking with him about whatever it was.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: And then just being honest about the changes that are taking place in the world and reminding not just him, but the kids that I care about that there are going to be things that happen in the world and in your life that are going to be upsetting. And please feel. Have those feelings about those things. If you feel sad, feel sad. You can feel sad, but without being depressed. You can just feel sad, but feel all of those feelings that you're feeling around whatever it is that you have Going on, those are valid. And so have those feelings as big as you need to, and then we'll work through those and move on to the next thing that's up.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: So I'm just curious. I know that there's a lot going on that's impacting families right now. And Sean, can you talk a little bit just about the influence of family pressures? People are financially challenged, our social environment's changing and shifting. And so I know that those family pressures impact the leaders of the family like the parents or the guardians. And also that of course trickles down and impacts the youth as well. So can you speak to that a little bit?
[00:08:32] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, when we look at the financial stuff by itself, parents, whenever they're struggling, have less bandwidth.
And the biggest thing that you need for kids is bandwidth, because it takes a lot of bandwidth to raise a kid, period. And then to raise a kid as well as you want to, as parents want to, it takes a ton of bandwidth.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: Absolutely right. Yeah.
[00:09:02] Speaker C: I won't say it's expensive because it's something we want to do, but takes a lot of cost. And when you're stressed and when you're struggling, you just don't have it. And so you might get to miss out as a parent. Right. And then the kids definitely miss out in the contact and the attention and the support that they need in order to grow as well as you'd like them to. And I see a lot of my parents struggling with that. A lot of them. I also see a lot of my parents struggling with the, the changes that we're dealing with. The social media changes have been extreme and most of my parents don't know how to deal with it. Even as a therapist, I'm still trying to figure out how do we deal with what amounts to an addictive substance that we've put in all of our kids hands and that they can access and that they spend all their time focusing on. And they're losing contact with our social relationships as they become teenagers, they become disconnected from their parents because of it sometimes.
So it's a lot.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: And I wonder how much it adds to the problem that whatever advice the parents do get tends to be very glib and very sort of obvious, you know, don't let so and so raise your kid, you know, And I mean, yeah, everyone agrees with that, but I mean, you know, I mean, if.
[00:10:29] Speaker C: You.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: Know, someone gets to be a mega social media influencer with however many millions of followers, because keeping that out is not, it's easier said than done, you know.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: Yeah, it's hard to keep all those influences out.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: It sure is. And the pressure that comes with that is huge. And I was just thinking about that in relation to, to Sean, with your earlier age kids that are 6 and my son who's 25 and an adult, it doesn't change the impact that social media has regardless of the age. Right. Like I think of there still being issues with a 25 year old around social media and living your life out loud and being intentional about what you post and what you don't post and sharing that. And I know that children as young as, and we're talking electronics besides just social media because I think about telephones. I've seen people who have cell phones that, you know, they have their first grader with the cell phone and I understand, you know, it's a way to check in and all that. But that's really young to start looking at locking in to this device that you know, not only impacts you emotionally but physically. I mean, just your neck strain alone from looking down and walking and never looking up and seeing the sky and the birds and the, the trees and people that are around you. So I just think that it doesn't really change. The age doesn't matter. That the impact of not just social media but cell phones and being locked in all the time. To me that just has a huge impact on us.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean the research is pretty clear that social media impacts mental health for kids.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:12:07] Speaker C: You know, the strongest research that I remember is the effects it has on young women and their self esteem. Right. So it's something that we need to get a handle on as a community, as a society.
I see my family struggling to try to get a handle on it. And if we kind of go back to the bandwidth thing, the more pressures you're under, the less energy you're going to have to fight things like that, you know, because at a certain point it's cost effective for the kids to be busy with something.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:40] Speaker C: And there's, there's good things that come with like tablets. Like there's learning programs and stuff like that. It's just trying to figure out how to manage that so it doesn't slide into too much.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: That's right. And it can. And that's the thing. If you're busy working and you have to get home and cook dinner and you've got laundry and they have homework, it's easy to say, here, grab this tablet for a few minutes and play with this while mom or dad are busy cooking Dinner or, Or doing whatever else that we have to do. And so I can definitely see just the toll of those daily stressors that you have as parents and adults caring for young children, the demands that you have, how it can impact.
It's easy. Just pass it to them.
[00:13:19] Speaker C: Yeah. And I don't want to shame people because. Right.
For me, it all comes back to how do we build a society where people can be healthy?
Because the thing about being a therapist is you focus on the. You focus on the end result. Right.
But most of this stuff, if we stopped it down the line, if we built a healthier society, like, I wouldn't be out of a job, but I'd have less of a job and I'd be happy for it.
A lot of this comes to us starting to rethink how we consciously redesign our social structures to support families and to support children so that they are naturally healthy from the beginning and we don't have problems.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Well, I know growing up oodles of years ago when we didn't have social media, the worst thing that we had was television that went off at night and the snow would come on there and you know, real old school, at least black and white. You know, we had TVs back then, but just the opportunity. You were kind of forced to do other things, to go outside, to play, to enjoy green spaces and parks and to talk with your parents. You know, those kind of things came more naturally and than they do nowadays. It's so easy to get distracted and get caught up with the daily stressors of life. Their school demands, in addition to the digital overload. Right. And the financial strain. All of those things are things that impact our relationships with our young people and their relationships with each other.
[00:14:49] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And you know, you mentioned school. I think.
I'm sorry. So grateful that we live in a country that has public education. I think that we've constructed our public education system in ways that aren't always helpful to young people's mental health.
For years, kind of working with the school systems, they always do their very best, but the system isn't designed to focus on mental health.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:15:14] Speaker C: Right. So I've spent tons of time trying to support children when the priority is on scores and grades and those things and mental health is a side issue to help them get those scores and grades. When I think it's actually like feeling good about your life is the primary thing we want.
And I'm hoping that in the future we'll have school systems that are built around human. Well, Being.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I was kind of reminiscing and thinking back over 30 years ago when one of my roles was to help do a school based program, school based mental health program, which worked really well. I mean, it was a very collaborative team of people within the school as well as social services outside of the school that came in and provided those resources and supports for children, youth and families. And so I think we tend to ebb and flow. We move away from that and then generally something traumatic may happen and people are like, oh my goodness, we need mental health back in the schools. And so then it'll come back. Because Even back then, 30 plus years ago, we had a crisis emergency team that went out to the schools, went out to the homes at hours outside of the 8 to 5 and that were there to support youth and families. And I know there's some talk and there are some places where that's still, that's kind of coming back around, but we went many years where that wasn't there. And I think children, to me, the way that we can really support families and youth is support them in their natural environment.
And school is one of those places that's a captive audience. And we know that the kids as well as the staff and the teachers that come there have their own mental health strains and stressors as they walk in the building and they leave to go home.
[00:17:01] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I totally agree, totally agree. I also hope that we can.
I hope at the. So I see like crisis at the end, like the back end. I hope that at the front end we can really start to think about what kinds of conditions lead to better outcomes for people so that people are just naturally healthier so that we don't have these crises.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: That's right. How do we create environments where people can be well, as opposed to it having to get to the end result, which is a crisis.
[00:17:28] Speaker C: Right. And that's expensive.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: We can do that. Doing that is much less expensive than it is treating crisis and hospitalization. You would think after all these years we'd figure that out.
Still working on it.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Sean, you mentioned a school.
Do you deal very often with educators or.
[00:17:46] Speaker C: Totally, totally.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: And what sorts of things do you hear from them regarding?
[00:17:53] Speaker C: Oh, so at the Amela foundation, we do a lot of programming with the schools. We did a lot of programming with the schools during COVID so we heard a lot from the principals.
I mean, it's no surprise probably to anybody in our community. Educators work really hard. They're overworked, they're underpaid, they have a Lot of kids that they have to deal with. Too many kids per classroom.
And then on top of it, the emphasis isn't on education. The emphasis is on measuring education outcomes so that money comes in.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:27] Speaker C: So it's kind of an assembly line, which, you know, it's an inhuman system.
It's a factory system which schools I think were built for originally. Right.
And that wears educators down. And so they're tired, but they're also some of the most dedicated people in our community.
Right. They're some of the most dedicated people I've met.
I hear a lot of desire for more space, more time and more support, more well being and of course, better finances. Right.
And my hope is that maybe we can start building that stuff in for them.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Absolutely. And it goes for both. I can't stress that enough for both the teachers and staff as well as the children and families.
[00:19:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: And we can't look at children in a vacuum. Even if we create all these resources and say we can support the child in the school, they go home. And so. And some of the parents, a lot of the parents are stressed as well. And so having the opportunity to extend those resources and supports to support families, I think is very important as well.
[00:19:39] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, it sounds impractical just because we are what we are and we think we can't seem to imagine outside of the world we've built, even though we've constructed it.
But if we just slowed everything down and gave more space and focused on humanity, human well being, caring about humans, we would be so much better off, all of us.
It's. Yeah, absolutely crazily that simple in some ways.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: No kidding. And it didn't cost a lot.
That's free last time I checked.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
All right. So we've said quite a bit about challenges and there are many, but I want to kind of maybe try to shift the conversation a little bit to strengths and supports and I guess specifically what strengths and supports help young people adapt and stay mentally well during uncertain times.
And also, and because we haven't covered this quite yet, I know you do a significant amount of work with young men in particular.
And so I can't help but wonder what you have found to be impactful in your working with young men especially.
[00:21:00] Speaker C: I mean, strengths and supports. The things I think that support human well being the most is connection and belonging.
During the pandemic, there was a study, they were looking at schools and the schools that had a sense of connection, belonging. The kids did better. It's not a surprise.
It is kind of the opposite direction of which our society is pulled. If we can start moving in a direction where people have a sense of place.
They have a sense that the people in their lives care about them, that they're seen, they're loved and that they're safe.
That they have rituals and rites of passage and a sense of structure in the flow of the way their lives go, that those are maintained and that they have a sense of special connections who can support them in times of difficulty.
Those are really important.
Those particular people, those helpers, those people that they can come, that they can talk to whenever things are hard, that they feel safe and comfortable sharing with.
Those are critical things.
And outside of that, I think there's also things like people need a sense of fun and a sense of purpose. Those things are really critical for kids feeling like their lives are meaningful and that they can weather the challenges that they're experiencing.
This is true for young men. I feel like young men. There's been some big social transitions for young men.
Fewer young men are going to college. Right. Fewer young men are being successful academically.
There has been a shift away from supporting young men as a concept.
And what I see is young men are needing some support, in a sense, of what does male identity mean now?
There's a big market for unhealthy male identity on the Internet at this point, which we've all seen. I don't see as much of a market for healthy identity. I don't see as much of a.
As a media platform for healthy male identity. I really think that's been my experience, is what young men are craving or role models and ways of conceptualizing what manhood means and the century and support in doing those things.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: One thing I would say that I've appreciated having worked in the mental health field for so long is not just young males, but just overall the whole thought process about mental health. Because I remember the stigma and the taboo being so high. You would dare not say that you lived with a mental health condition or that your mental health was suffering or you were being challenged. But nowadays people are real quick to say, you know, my mentals are not right, or I'm not, you know, that's kind of the slang, but that I'm not feeling good emotionally. And I think that people are much more open. This generation, our younger generations, our 20s and 30s, they're real quick to just say, I'm not doing that. I need a mental health day, or I need a mental health break. And so to me, that's a strength that I'VE seen that we've been challenged with as a society and for so long, and that is separating our mental health from our overall health. But now I see that people are really incorporating and integrating and understanding that there is no health without the mental piece to that the mental health is critical. And so to me, that's such a strength because it creates such room for opportunity to educate and to support people at a different level than we have centuries ago. So I really, I'm loving that. I'm loving to see people talking about mental health.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Okay, so, Sean, I don't want to assume too much, but maybe it's been posed to you at any point in your life that you have some sort of an incumbent responsibility to serve as a role model to young men and boys, whatever that may mean to you.
But I am curious about that, actually, what form that takes for you and.
And what is it that you try to model to young men and boys if you do?
[00:25:23] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, man, that's a deep one.
In my profession, there aren't a lot of male therapists. There aren't a lot of male therapists of color at all.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Just a plug for male therapists. Right?
You're missing that.
[00:25:40] Speaker C: Some folks would like to be therapists. Please just join us.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: Call Sean. Hit him up.
[00:25:44] Speaker C: Call me. Let's go.
We need more. For sure.
There is an absence of male energy and experience in the areas of helping in our society. And so for me, as a, you know, one of my goals has been to encourage other men to help more, to mentor, to coach, to get out and support each other. So my favorite programs are peer to peer programs where you support young people in helping other young people. I love doing those.
I love.
When I was.
Before the pandemic, I had a program at Aikens and I would help young men support other young men and support the younger kids.
And I had other programs where young people were supporting other young people.
So modeling for me comes in the form of supporting men in being more nurturing and being more helpful.
That's really important.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
And you, Vicki, I don't need to say you are raising a young man.
And again, not that it's something that you feel like you always have to harp on, but.
And yeah, there's this whole I spend too much time online is part of my problem. That's one of the reasons why I can strongly relate to what y' all have brought into the conversation.
But.
Well, you know, you need a man to effectively mentor a young man and.
Yeah. And what is your kind of Way of kind of being in that whole conversation about male mentorship as the mother of one.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Sure. So I think it's important for young men to have a relationship with another male. I do. I agree with you, Sean, that the peer to peer, whether it's someone that's more of a mentor that's your age or someone that's older, or a parent, a father or father like figure, I think that's critical. Because mothers and women, we can only go so far. There are things that we cannot teach a man. I know there's controversial controversy around that, but I do believe that just the nature of understanding how the male brain thinks and how society impacts your mind, especially as a young man of color, I think it's critical that those relationships are formed and encouraged and that young men have the opportunity to just sit and talk and have dialogue and chew the fat and just discuss stuff in a way that you either don't feel comfortable sharing or discussing with your mother or your partner or girlfriend or whatever. I mean, I just think that's critical. And you can get some encouragement and you can think and watch things online that can encourage you and that can give you some guidance. But there's nothing like being in the space and sharing space with another male. I believe that. And I'm not even a male, but that's just my perspective on that. And so, as Sean mentioned, I think just having older males or peers being intentional about checking on each other, hey, brother, how are you doing? Are you okay? Or hey, young man. Even speaking in the grocery store and just having a conversation, because as a society, we've moved away from that, Even acknowledging each other's presence. And so I think just by speaking and acknowledging the other person is sharing space with you and exchanging a few words. Even those small things can go a very long way.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, this kind of relates back to what you said a little while ago, about thirds spaces and how critical those can be.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: And one really cool thing about third spaces is the opportunities that they give to hang out with people who are older than you, with people who are younger than you, with people who are kind of at different points along the life course, whether it's people who are much older than you or much younger. And I tend to think that.
That we all get something out of that.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: That's right. All those spaces are great.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:17] Speaker C: I think about the school system, how weird it is to be segmented according to your age and only be hanging around people your exact age all day, all the time, Especially when you're teenagers, that's a recipe for disaster.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: I think that explains a lot of the status competition that goes on because you're so well matched otherwise, and so they have nicer shoes than you.
Any little thing becomes part of the competitive hierarchy.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: Whereas across generational divides, those things, they don't matter as much.
[00:30:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I agree.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: And I think one thing that I've appreciated about Amala is having the opportunity for creative outlets so that young people can sit and journal. Or you encourage them drawing or whatever it is outside of doing something on their phone or on their computer.
I love that. Can you speak a little bit to some of the things that you guys have done and continue to do to encourage just creativity and movement, whatever it is, that's just a little different than the norm?
[00:31:23] Speaker C: Yeah, totally. I mean, so all of our circles basically involve some sort of mindfulness, some sort of movement, some sort of activity, and some sort of conversation.
So we always try and keep. We always try and explore multiple modes of expression, whether it's artistic, whether we're drumming, which is one of my favorites.
I loved. I love doing the drum drumming with young people, or whether it's. It's doing restorative circle conversations. We also. We also do ropes course, and we do.
Those were fun. And we did cool camps where we do, like, a music camp and musicians would come from different parts of Austin and help young people learn how to play different instruments and things like that.
And for me, I think we are able to express ourselves best in environments where we're doing something together and we're doing something new.
It kind of encourages our brain to start to look at things differently. And that creative outlet opens us up to being able to talk about things that we've been holding in different ways.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome.
So important.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: Okay, so I think I'm going to get us out on this.
Yeah. I mean, just any, I guess, closing thoughts that either of y' all had, and also maybe along with those closing thoughts and Vicki. Yeah. So you'd be doing this on behalf of the Hogg Foundation. Just anything you'd like to plug about things that are happening that you'd love for our listeners to be aware of that may be happening over the next six weeks or so.
Just Sean. Or just even more about how people who want to get involved could.
[00:33:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I can talk about some programming we're working on.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Sure, sure.
[00:33:20] Speaker C: One of my major goals is to distribute mental health.
So the more. The more, as Vicki was saying, the more people understand it, the more people like it's part of our natural way of talking about the better for all of us.
So we're working really hard on developing a community support specialist model where we're gonna. We're gonna. We're gonna train community members in understanding mental health better and also facilitating some of the circles that we do at AMLA in their own community spaces so that we can distribute this as far as we can. So that's. That's exciting.
I like the idea as a therapist is his power is there so you can give it away. So it's exciting to think that we can just give this knowledge away and it can be more helpful to the community.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: That sounds really awesome. And I think to me, a plug for that would be a plug for supporting those efforts in that program. I think that's great because the more. And I liked how you said distributing mental health because to me, that takes it away from being a project or a program and moves it more into being just a part of society and what we are and who we are. And so I really like that.
As far as the Hogg foundation, we don't have anything immediately coming up. We have recently launched a new opportunity to apply for funding and for. Specifically focused on rural communities and border communities. And so I'm excited about that because it's an opportunity for communities that typically don't have access to funding or where they may have limited access to resources to create collaboratives and to be able to support community.
So coming together as a community to apply for funding and to look at what does it take when you're away from kind of the hustle and bustle of the city? What does community wellness look like outside of those urban areas? And so excited about that and encourage people to check out our website for that. And then coming up in the early fall, in early September, we will be hosting our Robert Lee Sutherland seminar in San Antonio. So be on the lookout for that as well. And some exciting things that will be developments that will be announced in conjunction with that as well.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And so to know more, you can just visit our website, hog.
Utexas. Edu, just to get more information about both of the.
The exciting things that Vicki just mentioned.
And yeah, regarding that funding opportunity, I think the deadline is August.ish. august 11th, I want to say check the website to know for certain.
You have a good six weeks yet to apply. If you are interested.
Sean, Vicky, this is awesome.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:36:13] Speaker C: Thank you so much.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: So much.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: All right.
All right, well, take care.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: You too. Thanks.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: Thanks, Sean.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Thank you.
All right.
