Registration will be available soon for 2018!

Recruitment

It is important to invest time and effort into recruiting volunteers for the Youth Count because of the hidden nature of youth who are homeless, the length of time that the Youth Count takes place, and the amount of territory that needs to be covered.

Based on focus groups of youth under 18 and young adults from 18-24, this population prefers the young adults volunteers to administer the survey rather than youth peers or adults of 25 or older. Additional efforts should be made to recruit volunteers from colleges and universities or other communities within this age demographic.

Unlike the Point-in-Time Count’s survey over a particular night, the Youth Count stretches on for a week while surveying about a single night. Both Counts are statewide and require local and community engagement to effectively cover each region.

Here are several suggested methods for recruiting volunteers:

• Coordinate with the regional Point-in-Time Count Coordinator in order to outreach to PIT volunteers to continue their participation for the Youth Count.

• Outreach to schools, colleges, and universities through their Student Life Centers, Community Services or Engagement offices,through the social work department, or volunteer clubs.

• Share and post on social media about the Youth Count, targeting community organizations such as those mentioned above.

• Reach out to local and regional media outlets with press releases to get the word out about the count. Also consider suggesting that reporters participate in the Youth Count as part of their coverage of the event.

Scheduling

Regional leaders and their volunteer coordinators are responsible for scheduling the volunteer teams and determining their routes or placesments.  Through their registration, volunteers will indicate what dates and times during the Youth Count they are able to volunteer. Based on this information, volunteers will be placed on teams of volunteers with similar schedules and assigned to a route or location to conduct the survey.

Some organizations participating in the Count will have staff volunteers who must also be trained. Their work schedules should be verified to make sure that a trained staff member is available at key times during each day of the Youth Count.

Scheduling a great number of volunteers, organizations, and locations can be very challenging. It is recommended that Youth Engagement Team Initiative leaders assign a volunteer coordinator for each major municipality or area of the Youth Count. For example, Fairfield County’s YETI might have ones for Stamford, Norwalk, Bridgeport, Fairfield, and Danbury. Volunteer coordinators are useful for scheduling as well as training volunteers.

Training

In person train-the-trainer meetings will be held in each region of the state during the week of January 8th to 12th. To find out more about your region’s trainings, contact your Youth Engagement Team Lead or training@cceh.org for dates, times, and locations.

In addition, there is a recorded training webinar available on engaging youth for the 2018 CT Youth Count! to overcome any obstacles volunteers may face.

All volunteers must be registered and trained by a trainer before participating in the Youth Count. Training is essential to maintaining consistent data quality for the results of the Youth Count.

The Mobile App

The app, which has been developed by Microsoft, will be available early the week of the Count. To read more about the app, please click here.

While it is discouraged to conduct the paper version of the survey, as all will need to be entered into the app regardless by noon of the following day, an official version of the paper version will be available on this page as well as through your YETI leaders when it is made public.