23rd Annual YOUTH TO YOUTH Middle School Conference

About the Conference

Where else would you want your son or daughter to be but at the 23rd Annual Y2Y Conference held at Castro Valley High School in Castro Valley?

On March 4, 2017 more than 80 high school leaders from San Ramon Valley and Castro Valley will be engaging and helping 350 middle school youth to have fun and believe in themselves without drugs or alcohol being part of the plan.

For the past several months these high school students have been working enthusiastically planning drug prevention programs, participating in leadership activities and having a whole lot of fun while planning this conference for your 6th, 7th or 8th grader.

High school leaders will guide their younger peers through skits, panel discussions, team building challenges, and small group activities. More than 20 workshops will be offered throughout the day. The conference will end with an exciting dance geared towards middle school students. More than just an event, the Youth to Youth Middle Conference is a way to see the best in teens and their leadership skills. If your kids like hanging out with their friends, meeting new friends, having fun, dancing and good food ~ then this is the conference for them.

Examples of Workshops:

Ins and Outs of Being a Teenage Girl
Guy Code
A Fatal Vision Experience
What to Expect in High School
Stress Reduction Techniques
Drug and Alcohol Information
And many more!

What will our day look like? Who will we meet? What will be do?

Morning

Welcome - Opening Ceremonies
Family Groups - Small breakouts
Key Note Speaker - Ray Lozano
Team Building Challenges

Afternoon

Lunch
Workshops
Teen Panel
Dinner
Y2Y Drug-Free Dance!

This is your site for all the conference information. Below is the link to our online participant registration form. We have sold-out for the last 5 years, so please register early in ordr to save your space(s).

Conference Fee: $45 before February 18th. After, the price increases to $55 (Fee includes: lunch, dinner, t-shirt, keynote speaker, dance, dj....and much more)

Helpful tips before you REGISTER:

CRITICAL!!! Once you begin the registration process, please be prepared to answer all questions regarding your child's name, school, medical and emergency contacts, and make your payment. If you exit the registration page without completing all sections, you will need to contact us.
Please be advised that all payments will be accepted thru PayPal. It is NOT required to have a PayPal account to use this feature. You will be given the option to pay via debit or credit card.
There are no refunds after February 18, 2017.
This is a full-day conference. For participants to get the most out of the conference, they are expected to arrive on time and remain for the full conference. If a participant needs to leave during the conference, they will not be permitted to return. As conference coordinators, we are very firm with this policy.

Meet this year's keynote speaker. A good friend to Castro Valley and San Ramon Youth to Youth, Ray Lozano!

About Ray....

Since 1986, Ray Lozano has educated and entertained thousands of students in hundreds of middle schools and high schools from Alaska to Florida, and internationally in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. Ray has a talent and gift for conveying what could be construed as boring drug and alcohol prevention information in such a fun and humorous way that his audiences come away informed and entertained. The best analogy would be giving your kids medicine in a spoon-full of sugar. There’s a good reason that Ray’s audiences feel like they just came back from the Improv rather than from a “lecture.” Ray has performed stand-up comedy at the Improv in Hollywood and Ontario, CA. It is his background in comedy that keeps his audiences coming back time and time again. The fact that he has been asked to return to many of the same schools across the nation, some for as long as 15 years, speaks to Ray’s ability to keep his information updated, fresh and relevant.

Ray’s varied experience professionally has equipped him to become the unique speaker that he is today. His career started out in the Teen Challenge Ministry Institute, where he saw firsthand the ravages of drug use in young adults. Having not used drugs or alcohol, this was an eye-opening experience to see firsthand the deleterious effects that drugs have on a young person. He saw how drugs stripped away a person’s chance for an extraordinary life. From working with people fighting their way back from addiction, he realized he wanted to work with kids before they got involved in drugs and alcohol, which led him to his work in prevention.

As a Vice Principal for a private elementary school, he launched an after-school program with an emphasis on promoting a family-oriented, drug-free philosophy. This gave him an understanding from an educator’s perspective that schools are looking for the best for their students.

Ray Lozano was the Program Specialist for a very successful youth prevention program at an internationally known hospital. The youth program provides drug and alcohol education for youth ages 14-18. Through the program, Ray increases the adolescent’s knowledge of the effects of drugs and alcohol on the body, the addictive process, consequences of risky behaviors, alternative choices and the ability to make positive life decisions.

Ray holds a current certification as Prevention Specialist by the state of California as a drug and alcohol counselor.

Video Clip of Ray

About Youth to Youth

The Youth to Youth program is a community-based drug, alcohol, tobacco prevention and youth leadership program created in 1982 in Columbus, Ohio and is proudly sponsored by Community Against Abuse (CASA) in the San Ramon Valley and Castro Valley Community Action Network (CV CAN) in Castro Valley. The all day conference is an entire day that kids get together, have fun and talk about some really important issues. It is an opportunity for young people to support each other working towards one common goal - to make the very best decision and live a healthy, drug free life.