Happy New Year everyone! Like you probably are, I am so glad that 2020 is done, and I can’t wait to see what 2021 has in store for us. This month, we are going to be focusing on advocating. Advocating, for anything, would be a great New Year’s resolution to have.
One of the ways that I have advocated in 2020 was with FARE’s Teen Advisory Group, which is also known as TAG. TAG is a group of teens ages 11-22 that either have food allergies or personally know someone with food allergies. In this blog post, I will be talking about my experience with TAG, the opportunities I had, and how you can (and should) sign up.
I signed up for TAG in January of 2020 on the last day that they were taking applications. I didn’t think I would actually enjoy it, or even get in, since the application had some intimidating questions. I was also new to advocating, which made it even more intimidating.
One year later, I can say that there is nothing to be intimidated by. Just answer the questions to the best of your ability. Also, it seems like most of the people that apply get in. So if you are scared of the application process: don’t be.
I got my acceptance email in mid February. About a week later, the project sign up sheet came out. The cool thing about TAG is that most of it is run by teens. Teens come up with just about any idea for a food allergy project, ranging from blogs to taste tests to even writing books! I was involved in the blog Food Allergic Teens, the book It’s a Beautiful Life, and an epinephrine awareness project.
The second sign up sheet was for writing a blog post for FARE’s blog. I got a spot for their New Year’s blog post, and you can read my blog post here.
Throughout the year, FARE also has many other opportunities for the Teen Advisory Group, such as TAG Talks, which are Zoom meetings to get to know each other. There are so many opportunities to get to know each other; the whole Teen Advisory Group has its own Discord chat so that we can ask each other questions and just connect with each other, even from across the country.
Overall, I would definitely recommend joining the Teen Advisory Group. It’s so much fun, and you will not regret joining! You can learn more and sign up here until January 31, 2021.