Martin Rafferty is an American activist and philanthropist who is the founder and executive director of the non-profit organization Youth ERA (formerly known as Youth Move Oregon).
Early life
Rafferty lived through a period of homelessness when he was 12.
He is an adoptee.
Career
Rafferty founded Youth ERA in Eugene, Oregon under the name Youth Move Oregon (Youth MVO) in 2009, when he was 22 years old.
Youth ERA provides youth mental health services in areas such as peer support, crisis response, and suicide prevention.
Rafferty was named the 2013 Children’s Mental Health Advocate of the Year by the Oregon Council of
Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
Rafferty was one of eight individuals profiled in the 2017 exhibit titled “Inspiring People & Projects” at the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was ...
’s Discovery Center in
Seattle, Washington
Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...
.
Rafferty was also named one of Rising Business Stars’ 20 Under 40 in 2018.
In 2020, Rafferty and Youth ERA opened a youth drop-in center known as the Eugene Drop in Eugene. Rafferty and Youth ERA also collaborated with Oxford University to develop the pilot event Uplift in 2020, which taught participants how to exercise self-care and help prevent child abuse.
Rafferty also partnered with Oxford University on a research project centered on online peer support, co-developing the peer support training program used in the project.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rafferty, Martin
Living people
Activists from Oregon
1987 births
American adoptees