Nearly four years ago, Indianapolis-based visionaries and leaders Anthony Battle, Daniel Mills and Heather Savage came together with their shared interest in behavioral health and equipping youth with the tools they need to succeed. The product was Let Them Talk, a youth-centered nonprofit that’s creating safe spaces for youth, families and communities to connect, grow and thrive through authentic engagement and purposeful partnership.
Creating Safe Spaces
“When we originally started Let Them Talk, we felt like something was missing,” says Heather Savage, executive director and co-founder, along with Battle and Mills, of Let Them Talk. “We all come from a background of working with kids. We felt like something was missing and a lot of the data that was portrayed didn’t represent our youth and didn’t represent the families that we serve. We wanted to create something that gave them that access, gave them those resources, gave them those spaces where they can see themselves in.”
The original idea behind Let Them Talk was to have a conference for youth and family to show more representation, but after running some things past their targeted populations, they shifted gears and ultimately decided to create safe spaces for youth to thrive, grow and connect.
“That’s really how we ended up building Let Them Talk,” Savage says. “We allowed them to really tell us what they needed and what they wanted.”
Serving Indy’s Youth
Currently, Let Them Talk has a variety of programming and services, ranging from school-based, community-based and behavioral health services. Let Them Talk predominantly serves youth ages 13 to 17.
“In the summertime, we’ll slide down to 12 years old because we wanna catch those kids that are coming out of elementary and going into middle school,” Savage says. “We’re also expanding into some elementary youth as well, because we’ve been getting a lot of requests for some elementary schools to have some programming and so that’s our school-based program.”
Targeting Help According to Need
Within local schools, such as the partnership it has with Warren Township, Let Them Talk can partner with schools on violence prevention, social-emotional learning, civic engagement and more.
“We really listen to what the school is saying about what they need,” Savage says. “It’s like, ‘Hey, we’re seeing a lot of bullying or we’re seeing vaping. Can you come in and add some of this to your programming?’ And so we’ll deliver that.”
Let Them Talk also has community-based and youth-focused programming, as well. One of its programs includes the Let Them Talk (LTT) Club, which serves as a safe space for youth.
“We also have our community-based portion, which is youth-focused but also community-based, as well,” Savage says. “With our community-based clubs, those are also our Let Them Talk clubs. We normally just host those one Sunday a month and that is a city-wide program. It doesn’t have to be these kids at this specific school. Any kid from across the city can come to our clubs on Sundays and those are more life skills. We’re having our kickback conversations, like fireside chat with the kids, figuring out what they’re dealing with, what’s going on. What do they need adults around them to know? We teach them how to advocate for themselves.”
Learn More
Additional behavioral health services include individual counseling, family counseling, prevention programming and more. To learn more about Let Them Talk and its offerings or how to get involved, visit letthemtalkindy.com.
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