Our mission is to help improve youth culture by prioritizing relationships and promoting connection in the lives of young people.
A few years ago, Kreg Edgmon decided he needed to make some changes. Caught up in the work and grind of life, he felt he was not focusing enough on his connections with family and others. While he loved the work he was doing as a therapist helping troubled teens, he was increasingly bothered by how disconnected many of them were – from family, from community, and even from each other. And it wasn’t just the troubled ones. Modern technology and media coupled with a culture that often prioritizes achievement over relationships results in a lot of unfulfilled and unhappy young people. On top of that, Kreg’s oldest of four daughters was about to enter middle school, an environment that is often not ideally designed for youth development and human connection. He decided he needed to make changes for himself and family, and do more to help make changes in the world of youth. That decision resulted in years of research, collaboration with experts, and ultimately the formation of a nonprofit organization dedicated to prioritizing relationships and promoting connection in youth culture. Weyo was born!
Weyo’s current focus and our cornerstone intervention is Connection Coaching. There are few options for young people who want to work on improving relationships and connections with others, which is a significant oversight and a missing link between common sense and common practices. Connection coaching is an engaging, fun, personalized intervention that has the potential to benefit youth in any community and culture. We’ve been developing and testing connection coaching with many satisfied young people for over two years. Our goal is not to get rich off this important and missing resource, which is why we are developing Weyo as a nonprofit. Our vision is for connection coaching, or something like it, to become available to young people around the world.
Weyo has big plans moving forward. As we gain a better understanding of the importance of connection in the lives of individual youth, families, and communities, we will continue to improve connection coaching. Our team of fun, engaging, skilled coaches is growing. Simultaneously, we have a small but growing research team of scholars and professionals. We are building our business to become self-sustaining, so that it can grow and impact more lives, and we are developing content and curricula that will be accessible in various self-study formats (digital content, videos, etc.) to inform and inspire youth, and those who are dedicated to youth, families, and our greater human family. We also are working on ways to support educators and extracurricular clubs (sports, dance, etc), and other youth mentors to help prioritize relationships and promote connection in many contexts and communities. And there’s more to come!
Within Weyo:
Beyond Weyo:
