5/29/2025
Depression and mental health, stress issues, and vaping and smoking top the list of issues the youth of Alcona, Alpena, Montmorency, and Presque Isle Counties feel are affecting themselves and their peers.
The Northeast Michigan Youth Advisory Council (NEMYAC) recently completed a Youth Needs Assessment Survey, gathering opinions on the known issues currently affecting youth. NEMYAC is a youth philanthropy program through the Community Foundation for Northeast Michigan (CFNEM) which teaches young people the importance of philanthropy and helps them develop leadership skills through grantmaking and community service.
Every three years, Youth Advisory Councils, or YACs, throughout Michigan are required to survey their fellow youth to gain insight into the issues the youth feel are the most pressing for their local communities. The results of the survey are used to guide the YAC’s grantmaking for the next three years to address those issues. Grants from NEMYAC are awarded through the Kellogg Youth Endowment Fund at the Community Foundation.
“The results of this survey provide a good snapshot of what youth are facing in our communities, and give our YACs, our board, and even other funders and private donors in northeast Michigan a guide to help direct funding and donations where it is needed most for our youth,” says CFNEM Executive Director Patrick Heraghty.
CFNEM Program Director Jennifer Dingman says that while depression, mental health and stress have remained high on the survey results for the past six years, vaping is an issue that has moved up in concern across all nine counties in CFNEM’s service area.
“We know there is a lot of work to be done for our youth community through mental health support and in dealing with stress. We also now have input directly from the pre-teens and teens of our area telling us they recognize vaping as a real problem they want to see addressed for their peers,” says Dingman. “We hope nonprofits in northeast Michigan with programs that can address these issues, and others identified in the needs assessment, will apply for grant funding to support their work in these important areas.”
As a leadership activity, YAC members, working with their adult advisors, oversee the distribution of this survey to students in their own schools. The 2025 Northeast Michigan Youth Needs Assessment survey includes feedback from over 350 students at high schools in the CFNEM service area of Alcona, Alpena, Montmorency, and Presque Isle Counties. Once survey results are compiled, the list is narrowed down to the ten issues sited most as needing attention. Those ten issues from the 2025 survey are:
- Depression / mental health issues
- Stress issues
- Vaping / smoking / tobacco use
- Hygiene
- Lack of things to do locally
- Bullying
- Body image / appearance issues
- Teen drug use
- Underage alcohol use
- Family problems
“These ten issues are where our Youth Advisory Councils will direct as much funding as possible,” said Dingman. “While not every grant application needs to address these categories, we hope these results will encourage local agencies to enhance their efforts in tackling these issues with the knowledge that our YAC has a desire and ability to put funds toward those programs.”
The Community Foundation for Northeast Michigan is a charitable organization committed to providing people who care about the future of our area with unique and effective ways of supporting their community now, and for generations to come. Led by a volunteer board of local citizens, the foundation oversees a group of permanently endowed funds from a wide range of donors. Gifts of all sizes from individuals, families, businesses, and agencies are invested in a balanced, well-managed portfolio to build endowments, enabling support for students and local community nonprofits now and forever.
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