Youth-Led Equity Workshops
The ability to promote equity and inclusion is a crucial skill for the next generation of leaders. The Youth Justice Collective is a leadership development program for high school students interested in growing their social justice analysis and facilitation skills. It trains youth leaders to provide workshops to other youth and the broader community on a variety of social justice topics, including stop API hate, queer and trans solidarity, restorative justice, and implicit bias. In preparation to become Equity Facilitators, youth explore their personal identities and community histories while learning about how to address multiple systemic inequities and building multiracial solidarity. The Equity Facilitators then create curriculum and facilitate workshops that are requested by community partners.
Credit: CYC
Main Program Components
Curriculum and training for adult staff
CYC worked with a curriculum developer to create the training for adult staff. This ensured that staff were on the same page regarding justice issues and felt equipped to help youth learn about and navigate these topics.
Curriculum and training for youth leaders
Staff used their initial training to develop a curriculum for youth leaders. This curriculum aimed to deepen the youths’ understanding of social justice topics and help them explore their personal identities and community histories. It focused on empowering youth to take the lead in developing community workshops rather than giving youth a preset curriculum to facilitate.
Youth-led curriculum development
Equipped with a foundation in justice issues, Equity Facilitators identified issues impacting their communities and designed highly interactive and justice-oriented curricula to meet those needs.
Youth-led workshops and summit
Individual workshops can range from 60 to 90 minutes long, depending on the request of the community partner. Workshops can be conducted in a variety of settings, including in schools, out-of-school enrichment programs, and residential communities. The Equity Facilitators have also organized a Youth Action and Solidarity Summit. They worked with youth leaders from two other CYC programs to design the summit, including creating the title and theme for the event (“Finding Common Ground”), outreaching to community-based organizations to table at the resource fair, and creating the workshop sessions.
Keys to Success
Flexibility
High school students face many competing demands, including college applications, participation in other programs, and activism. The Youth Justice Collective aims to support youth as whole people and has adopted flexible practices to help youth thrive in the program. For example, program staff implemented small group discussions, one-on-one check ins, and additional reading materials to help youth catch up with their training.
External training experiences
CYC intentionally facilitated additional external training opportunities for the Equity Facilitators to deepen their understanding of social justice issues. One cohort of Equity Facilitators participated in Sojourn to the Past, a trip that traces the stories of the civil rights movement through multiple states in the South. The youth came away from this trip with a deeper understanding of the violent climate during the civil rights movement and an understanding that organizing and resilience are built through strong interpersonal relationships and community organizing. Several Equity Facilitators also participated in CPA’s restorative justice workshops, leading them to incorporate healing circles in their workshops.
Feedback surveys
Each youth-led workshop ends with a participant survey to provide feedback on the workshop. These feedback surveys are crucial for helping the Equity Facilitators reflect on the workshops, learn what went well, and understand what could be improved.
Intentional recruitment
The first iteration of the program recruited from youth who were already involved with CYC. This simplified the logistics of the program as it was first being formed, but it meant that most of the Equity Facilitators were Asian American youth. The program is branching out to other organizations to recruit to increase Latine and Black representation in the program and strengthen the program’s cross-racial solidarity work.
More experienced youth leaders
The Youth Justice Collective focused recruitment on youth who have already attended a leadership program prior to involvement with the Youth Justice Collective. Cultivating a deep understanding of multiple justice issues and the responsibility of creating workshops is an intensive experience. Recruiting youth who had a foundation in leadership skills and justice work allowed the Equity Facilitators to be able to begin facilitating workshops within one academic year.
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