Renaming our Foster Care Magazine, from FCYU to Represent:
After 10 years, we retire the name Foster Care Youth United, renaming the magazine Represent: The Voice of Youth in Care. The new name better reflects the mission of the magazine, which is to be a voice for teens. We also increase coverage of independent living issues. And we began publishing stories by young people who have left care about their struggles to live on their own.

Represent Editor Wins Prestigious Award:
Kendra Hurley, co-editor of Represent magazine, wins a PASEsetter Award for being one of the five best youth workers in New York City.

The Writing Process at Youth Communication
Executive Director Keith Hefner writes an article for the College Board Review that describes our approach to teaching writing: How we work with teens who often have weak writing skills to help them craft powerful stories that will appeal to teens who are reluctant readers. Please click here to read.

Teen Media History
and Challenges
Keith Hefner writes a White Paper on the history and challenges facing independent teen magazines for a conference on youth media sponsored by the Open Society Institute. Please click here to read.

The Crash
Represent editors Kendra Hurley and Nora McCarthy give a presentation at a U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services foster care conference on "The Crash," the debilitating emotional meltdown that many teens face when they leave foster care.

We Have a Sticky
Web Site
We begin monitoring website statistics during 2004. (We hadn't been able to in the past for technical reasons.) We are pleased to discover that we are getting an average of 2,500 unique visitors each week, and they're "sticky": the average stay is more than 15 minutes. Many of the visitors are adults: They download more than 100 copies of our Tips for Teachers newsletters each week. And many are teens: Our visits spike in the after school hours.

Parent Workshops and Anthology:
In addition to working with teens, we run writing workshops for parents who have lost their children to foster care and are struggling to change and get their children back. We publish A Knock on the Door, the first-ever anthology of stories by parents in this difficult situation.

Debunking the "Crack Baby" Myth: Our look back at crack, 20 years later (March/April 2004 issue of Represent), helps debunk the myth that children born to crack-addicted parents are destined to fail. The crack epidemic of the 1980s and '90s swept tens of thousands of youth into care, including many of our writers. The ensuing media hysteria made it seem like there was a "fetal crack syndrome" akin to fetal alcohol syndrome-but it was based on faulty studies. It severely stigmatized these youth, as they write in our "crack babies" issue.

Our teens' stories prompt the media to revisit the issue. National Public Radio's All Things Considered runs a 20-minute story featuring interviews with two of our writers. Other coverage includes an Associate Press story that is published in more than 50 newspapers nationwide and a column by Pulitzer Prize-winner ER Shipp.

During 2003-04, Represent writers also cover adoption, stress, building healthy relationships, succeeding after care, and other topics.

Represent Magazine Wins Cardozo Law School Public Service Award: The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Awards Represent its annual Public Service Award. Three Represent writers, Pauline Gordon, Antwaun Garcia, and Natasha Santos, give the keynote speech at the school's annual conference on foster care policy.

Pauline Gordon	Antwaun Garcia	Natasha Santos

New Youth Connections teens write special issues on AIDS & HIV, identity, work, relationships and sexuality, and the war in Iraq. They also report on the turmoil caused by huge changes at the New York City Department of Education, writing open letters to schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and later interviewing him.

Meeting Mental Health Needs: Teen mental health needs are notoriously under diagnosed and improperly treated, which makes many teens suffer needlessly. We publish two books to help rectify this situation. I'm Not Crazy is a teen-friendly guide for consumers of mental health services. Fighting the Monster is a manual that includes 50 stories in which teens describe their mental health struggles and how they got help.

The Booklet Project Takes Off: Teachers and agency staff often request short collections of stories on a single topic. To meet that need, in November 2003 we create the Quick Insight series: 50 booklets of 5-8 stories each on topics like peer pressure, obesity, and anger management. At the same time, an anonymous donor provided funds for a marketing effort. We sell more than 2,000 booklets in the next seven months.

back (2002-2003) | back to top | next (2004-2005)