Tilly's Life Center

Tlc partners with school districts and other youth agencies to deliver our proprietary social emotional learning (sel) curriculum, "i am me". Our facilitators go directly to the students, supplementing existing health education programs in a 36-unit, full semester and on-site format. Sel equips adolescents with necessary coping skills, motivation and purpose. Students emerge with mental health resilience and discover better ways to communicate, engage with others and build self-management tools to help achieve their social and Life goals. Since 2012, we have trained over 22,845 students in school-based and workshop settings.

We recognized that awareness and funding for mental health education is lacking in many school districts. During the pandemic, tlc recognized the growing need for mental health support services so again this year repeated our "tlc mental health awareness week grants" to 1 school, districts, or youth agencies, where 1,000 grants were used at their discretion to help students and teachers build resilience and improve their social and educational settings.

Tlc has developed an educator certification program to complement and enhance sel in daily learning. During this year, we provided stipends to 107 teachers, counselors, psychologists and health professionals for completing the training in full-day sessions at uci-irvine and on-site at schools and youth programs. This enables them to understand the importance of sel, and to promote the tlc model in their home districts or agencies. In four years, we have trained 415 educators, administrators, and health- related professionals in sel.