Jared Scott says his mission is clear: to give young people in North Texas and across the country the tools they need for self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
He has started what he calls a “culture shift tour,” going to middle and high schools and having those hard conversations.
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WATCH HEREIt’s an ambitious mission that focuses on the struggles of depression and anxiety in our young people.
“It started in tragedy. I had a friend in high school who committed suicide, and it turned into an epidemic,” said Scott. “We had 12 students in one school year attempt to take their life in our area, West Texas, the Permian Basin, and we didn't know how to talk about it. We didn't have a lot of resources back then.”
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SIGN UP So Jared was moved to put his feelings and emotions into music, hoping there was a kid out there who would hear it, and know they weren’t alone.
It started something way bigger than Jared would have ever imagined.
“One girl. One little girl told me that this story changed her life, possibly saved her life because she was thinking about it as well,” said Scott. “That was game over for me. It's like, all right, I'm going to use music, I'm going to use my voice. At the time, I was known as a shy kid, so if people could see me do this, of all people, then they would have the courage and the confidence to do it as well. That's exactly what it's been for the past 14 years, over a thousand different schools, and we're just starting movements. We're planting seeds.”
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Jared calls it the Culture Shift Tour, and it's already making stops at more than 1,000 middle and high schools across the country.
He says the culture shift tour is not just an assembly. He and his team are doing leadership breakouts where students talk about challenges they're facing on campus, then they give an action plan that they would try if they were in charge.
Those ideas are then handed over to school staff.
“I’ve been all over the country, pretty much every state, and what I see is a lot of us are dealing with a lot of the same things, but we have different perspectives of life based on where we live. So I'm trying to bridge gaps, not just the gaps of East Coast, West Coast, and different places all over the country or the world, but also generational gaps and misunderstandings, because we have different pressures. Adults didn't grow up with the internet, and now kids have AI. There's a big gap between that and me in this generation. I’m 29 now.”
Jared has partnered with other motivational youth groups like “I Believe In You” to help reinforce his mission.
“The vision is so much bigger when we come together and we can impact more people if we do it together, so we just recently decided that if we want to make the biggest impact we're going to do it as a team,” said Braxton Kilgo, Founder of “I Believe in You.”
The culture shift tour is hitting the road this summer with stops in Illinois, Atlanta, New Mexico, Nashville, and Arizona.
