20–30
Mini-Volunteers
Students and community members preparing to contribute their time, skills, ideas, and support.
A small beginning. A measurable journey.
Mini-Talks begins its public journey on 1 October 2026, during Selective Mutism Awareness Month. From the first Mini created to the first voice recorded, each interaction will become part of a growing picture of how the project is used, shared, and carried into everyday settings.
Mini-Talks is still at the beginning of its journey.
At this stage, impact is not about how large the numbers look. It is about whether the project is reaching real people, being explored in real settings, and creating a foundation that can grow responsibly over time.
Even before the public launch, a small but growing network has already begun to form around Mini-Talks.
The first families, experts, volunteers, and everyday spaces are already beginning to build the community around Mini-Talks.
Students and community members preparing to contribute their time, skills, ideas, and support.
Professionals and people with relevant experience beginning to connect knowledge, feedback, and practice with the project.
Everyday spaces beginning to take part in creating more understanding and supportive environments around communication.
Families connecting with Mini-Talks through lived experience, interest, early participation, and Mini-Kit sharing.
These are not final reach numbers. They are the first connections in a community that will begin growing publicly from 1 October 2026. Pre-launch figures reflect the current Mini-Talks network and may change as participation and registrations are finalized.
Selective Mutism Awareness Month marks the beginning of the next stage of Mini-Talks. Until now, much of the work has focused on building the system, developing Mini-Kits, creating the digital experience, forming the first community connections, and preparing the infrastructure needed for wider participation.
Mini-Talks events begin bringing families, volunteers, experts, and community members together around selective mutism, communication, making, and shared experience.
A growing space begins for questions, experiences, ideas, resources, and community knowledge to be shared over time.
Early Mini-Kit sharing has already begun. As more kits enter use, Mini-Talks can learn from how physical tools are explored alongside each family's existing support process.
Participation and use begin to form a visible record of the project, allowing this page to grow through real activity rather than projections.
This page is designed to change. As Mini-Talks grows, selected indicators can show real activity across the digital experience, Mini-Kits, events, Mini-Forum, and Mini-Community.
Recordings created across Mini-Talks experiences.
The combined duration of recorded voices.
Every second begins with someone choosing to press Record.
For Mini-Talks, impact does not begin only when a large number of people have been reached. Sometimes it begins much earlier.
A representation begins to feel familiar or meaningful.
An everyday setting can be explored without entering it in real life.
Sounds, words, sentences, and dialogue can be approached step by step.
The child chooses when and what to record.
Their own voice becomes part of the character or scene.
The experience can become another familiar reference point.
For Mini-Talks, impact is not only how many people enter the system. It is what becomes possible inside it.
Mini-Talks works across several connected layers. Each creates a different kind of activity — and therefore needs to be understood differently.
Making communication more approachable
Mini-Talks creates structured ways to explore sounds, words, sentences, dialogue, recording, and playback while keeping control with the child.
Making the experience feel like theirs
Personalized Minis, familiar details, repeatable scenes, and physical representations can make each experience more personally meaningful.
Building understanding around the child
Mini-Families, Mini-Experts, Mini-Volunteers, and Talk-Spots extend Mini-Talks beyond the child-facing tools and into the people and places around them.
Bringing tools into more everyday settings
Mini-Kits, digital experiences, community spaces, and events provide different ways for people to encounter and explore Mini-Talks.
Mini-Talks has been designed so that its growth can be documented from the beginning. But counting activity is not the same as claiming an outcome.
A recording shows that a recording took place. A Mini created shows that someone personalized the experience. A Mini-Kit shared shows that a physical tool reached a new setting.
A new Mini-Family, Mini-Expert, Mini-Volunteer, or Talk-Spot shows that the community is growing.
None of these numbers should be treated alone as proof of therapeutic progress.
Who and where is Mini-Talks reaching? Families, experts, volunteers, Talk-Spots, Mini-Kits, events, schools, organizations, and settings.
What are people actually doing? Creating Minis, recording, exploring scenes, attending events, joining discussions, and using Mini-Kits.
How is the system being explored? Recording frequency, voice time, communication levels, scene use, playback, and personalization.
What can help Mini-Talks improve? Family experience, expert feedback, Mini-Forum discussion, events, kit use, and future evaluation.
The goal is not to turn every interaction into a success claim. It is to build enough evidence over time to understand what Mini-Talks is doing, where it is useful, and what still needs to be learned.
Mini-Talks does not begin with a large historical dataset. It begins with a baseline.
The first recordings, first Minis, first kits, first Mini-Forum conversations, first events, and first community connections will establish the starting point from which future growth can be understood.
Rather than presenting projections as results, Mini-Talks will show what has actually happened and allow that picture to develop over time.
The numbers on this page are meant to grow because the project grows — not because the story needs bigger numbers.
Mini-Talks begins with a relatively small community, but the system has been designed so that new participation can be added without changing its basic structure.
Starting small does not mean thinking small.
Families, professionals, students, makers, volunteers, educators, and community members can take part through different roles.
Talk-Spots can extend awareness and understanding into everyday environments where children and families already spend time.
Mini-Kits, Mini-Designs, digital experiences, and future developments can create multiple ways to interact with Mini-Talks.
Real-world use, Mini-Forum conversations, events, expert feedback, family experience, and future research can continue shaping the project.
The story so far is not a story of scale. It is the story of building the foundations for what comes next.
Could communication be made more tangible, controllable, familiar, and playful for children navigating selective mutism?
Digital tools, Mini-Kits, personalized Minis, social scenes, and Mini-Community began taking shape.
Mini-Families, Mini-Experts, Mini-Volunteers, and Talk-Spots started connecting with the project, while early Mini-Kit sharing began.
Mini-Talks begins its public journey during Selective Mutism Awareness Month. Events begin, Mini-Forum opens, Mini-Kits continue moving into use, and public impact tracking begins.
The next stage will be shaped by real participation rather than projections.
Individually, each may look small. Together, over time, they can tell the story of how Mini-Talks grows. This page is where that story will remain visible.
Impact
Mini-Talks is only at the beginning of its public journey. As new voices are recorded, Minis are created, kits are shared, events take place, and people and places join the community, this page will grow with them.
Mini-Community is a space where people who are touched by the selective mutism journey come together.
As a family going through this process ourselves, there were times we felt alone.
My family worked to reach other families going through the same journey and sought therapists experienced in this field.
We saw how important teachers' support is in the selective mutism process.
For my sibling to do comfortable speech exercises, we first informed the venues, then went there together as a family.
At restaurants, I would read the menu for my sibling. For a long time, they would whisper their order in my ear. Over time, my sibling started placing their own order. For us, the most important thing at restaurants wasn't the food — it was the process of placing the order.
At the supermarket, my sibling asked the dairy clerk for milk for the first time in a very hoarse voice. When we had previously informed the clerk about my sibling's process and they showed where the milk was, my sibling responded to the question "How many glasses of milk do you drink a day?" by pointing with their fingers first. Then, another day, they asked for a different product's location in a slightly louder voice.
My sibling and I prepared small survey questions to ask people on the street. Sometimes people stopped and answered. Sometimes they said "no time" and walked past. Sometimes there were even those who warned my sibling to speak louder, as it was the first time they heard my sibling's voice directed at strangers.
Nobody had bad intentions, but most people simply didn't know how to act. If we could have reached volunteers who were aware of this issue and could communicate with the child without pressure, this experience would have been much safer and more comfortable. That's exactly the kind of need Mini-Community was born from.
However, I am not a professional, and neither is my family.
In Mini-Community, no treatment or solution is offered.
It exists only so that no one walks this path alone.
It is open to everyone who wants to raise the voices of children with selective mutism, support the process, and walk this path together.
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