When Jade Belfiore talks about mental health, she doesn’t sound abstract. She sounds busy.
At 16, Belfiore is juggling school, student government, and the low-grade hum of social media that never quite shuts off. She’s also helping coordinate something her school doesn’t yet treat as a priority: Teen Mental Health First Aid training. Working through the Maya Gold Foundation, where she now serves as a board member, Belfiore has been pushing to bring the program into Onteora High School—talking with advisors, looping in administrators, and translating the urgency she and her peers feel into something adults can act on.
“Mental health isn’t always a priority,” she says. “[Administrators] care about it, but they don’t know how to go about it—or it gets one unit [in health class].”
Ten years after its founding, the Maya Gold Foundation has come to see that gap—between concern and action—as the work itself. What began as a community response to devastating loss has evolved into a focused, youth-centered organization built on a simple premise: If teens are struggling with their mental health, they should be trusted to help shape the solutions.
From Grief to Clarity
The foundation was created by Mathew Swerdloff and Elise Gold after the death of their daughter, Maya, in 2015. In the years immediately following, they found themselves confronting something they hadn’t fully understood before—that Maya was not alone.
“Initially, it was really focused on the New Paltz community and the greater Hudson Valley,” Swerdloff says. “We learned that what Maya was struggling with was much more widespread than we knew.”
From the beginning, Gold is quick to clarify, the organization resisted a narrow label. “One thing we knew is that we did not want to be a suicide prevention organization,” she says. “There are many out there. What we kept asking was: ‘What tools or supports weren’t there for teens?’”
That question shaped the foundation’s mission and, over time, its willingness to change course. In its early years, the foundation experimented widely—funding small grants, hosting events, and supporting aligned organizations. Teens were present at every stage, often outnumbering adults at board meetings. But as the organization grew, its leaders began to recognize the cost of spreading too thin. “We realized we were casting a very wide net,” Swerdloff says, “and it was shallow.” So they let some things go.
Choosing Depth over Breadth
That shift coincided with the discovery of Teen Mental Health First Aid, an evidence-based curriculum designed to help young people recognize signs of mental health crises in peers and connect them with appropriate support. The foundation became an approved training site in 2020, expanding in recent years to include Youth Mental Health First Aid for adults who work with teens.
“It’s much more targeted,” Swerdloff says, “and much more effective than a couple of big community programs each year.”
Matt Arbolino, a development and communications consultant who joined the foundation last summer, describes the training in practical terms. “It’s like physical first aid,” he says. “You’re learning how to recognize a crisis, how to intervene without overstepping, and how to get someone to the right kind of help—while also taking care of yourself.”
Thanks to state funding administered through the Mental Health Association in New York State, the trainings are offered free to schools and community organizations. The goal is not awareness for its own sake, but capacity: giving teens and adults a shared language and set of tools that can actually be used when something goes wrong.
Research backs up the approach. Peer-to-peer models, the foundation emphasizes, are especially effective. As Gold puts it, “You’re more likely to go to a friend first. Part of the training is also knowing when to bring in a trusted adult—even if that risks a friendship. It’s more important to lose a friendship than lose a friend.”
What Teens Are Dealing with Now
For Belfiore, the need is obvious. “A lot of adults think it’s just part of being a teenager, or laziness or moodiness,” she says. “But a lot of students are dealing with real mental health problems.”
She points to anxiety, pressure, and a sense of constant comparison—much of it amplified by social media. “If you had a bad day at school years ago, you could come home and be separate from it,” she says. “Now you’re not.”
That lack of separation, she adds, intensified during the pandemic and hasn’t really eased. Teens are busier, more surveilled, and more aware of what they’re missing. Meanwhile, mental health education in schools often remains fragmented—folded into broader health curricula or reduced to a single unit.
“That’s why I wanted to bring the training into my school,” Belfiore says. “It’s not just talking about substance use or vaping. It’s actually about mental health first aid.”
A Different Kind of Leadership
Last December, the foundation formalized something it had been practicing informally for years: it welcomed teens ages 16 to 18 as voting members of its board of directors. The move required legal research and structural adjustments—New York State law places limits on what minors can vote on—but the intent was clear. “We’re not calling them youth members,” Gold says. “They’re board members. They’re directors.”
Swerdloff has noticed a difference. “They show up differently,” he says. “There’s more confidence, more engagement. They know their voice carries weight.”
For Belfiore, the change feels tangible. “I already knew they valued teens’ voices,” she says. “But this isn’t just sitting at the table doing nothing.” Her work connecting the foundation with her school is one example. Others include helping plan events, shaping outreach, and bringing teen priorities directly into board discussions. It’s an experiment—one the foundation readily admits is still evolving—but one rooted in its original values.
Looking Outward, Carefully
The foundation’s other major program area, international work in Nepal, also reflects that ethos of listening and adaptation. Inspired by Maya’s own interest in the region and her desire to address human trafficking, the organization has supported education and mental health initiatives there since its earliest years.
The work has changed over time. This spring, a small team will travel to Nepal at the invitation of local schools and NGOs to provide mental health training for educators and staff working with trafficking survivors.
Ten Years On
As the Maya Gold Foundation enters its second decade, its leaders are cautious about grand predictions. A strategic planning retreat this summer will help clarify next steps. For now, success looks less like scale than resonance. “You heard me,” Gold says, describing feedback from teens. “You valued my voice.”
For Belfiore, that might be the point. “If we can reduce the stigma,” she says, “so teens feel like it’s okay to not feel okay—that they’re not alone—that’s huge.”
This article appears in March 2026.
