Under the Radar, a New Generation of Community Leaders are Launching Nonprofits

By David Abromowitz

A new generation of founders and leaders of community-based organizations is emerging. This cohort of former “opportunity youth” — young adults ages 16–24 from low-income communities who left school early and were not in the workforce — are building on their own experiences and channeling their energies into innovative approaches to uplift their communities.

Take Terry Green in Columbus, Ohio. In 2015, Terry founded Think Make Live, which evolved from a presentation he had made to a senior humanities class at The Ohio State University.

Reflecting on his own journey out of poverty, Terry saw the need for an organization that could help teens and young adults in Columbus understand how someone makes a meaningful change in their life. He knew how hard that could be from his own struggle to overcome challenges and barriers.

Terry’s barriers were particularly steep: From 2009 to 2013 while in his early twenties, he had been incarcerated in state prison. When asked recently about what led to him becoming justice involved, Terry explained: “I grew up in a family where my father wasn’t in my household and my mother was involved in drug dealing. I picked up off my mother’s drug dealing ways when she got incarcerated during my 10th grade year in high school…”

But Terry realized while incarcerated that he wanted a different path. He participated in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange, a pre-release program offered by The Ohio State’s sociology department. He was released early to a half-way house program, and from there found his way to the Franklin County YouthBuild program in Columbus. His experience in YouthBuild opened his eyes to an alternative future.

“I started to meet people whose parents had both gone to college, so for them college was the family business. Suddenly I went from feeling like I was on a one-lane highway with only one destination, to seeing an off-ramp,” he recalls.

Like any of the thousands of students annually enrolled in local YouthBuild programs in 45 states, Terry spent half his time back in the classroom to complete his education, and the other half gaining work skills by building affordable housing for low-income and homeless families in his community. There were opportunities to engage in service to his community, and an emphasis on leadership training.

“I had to start thinking of making positive changes within my actions and now I am truly living a changed lifestyle,” said Terry.

Experiencing the power of service in his own life, he set out to create Think Make Live to be primarily centered around providing youth workforce development opportunities, innovative leadership programs and civic engagement community outreach. But the framework goes well beyond traditional social service referrals — the philosophy Terry has honed to help people identify their daily challenges and create innovative solutions infuses Think Make Live. Their services are focused on prevention, intervention and empowerment through a cognitive behavioral therapeutic approach.

Terry is tackling more and more barriers through this approach, expanding the organization to provide innovative social justice consulting for companies and nonprofit organizations, including consulting on ways business can hire justice involved youth.

In addition, he is combining his local activism with the need for national advocacy on behalf of young adults from similar backgrounds. Terry is an elected member of the YouthBuild USA National Alumni Council, which involves national travel hosting civic engagement and YouthBuild alumni gatherings. In 2015, he received the YouthBuild USA Outstanding Commitment to Leadership and Social Justice Award. He is also a community leader for Opportunity Youth United, a national movement of young people and allies working to increase opportunities and decrease poverty in America.

At The Ohio State University Mershon Center, he participated in a panel with Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. In 2017, Terry was the keynote speaker for the 7th Restored Citizen Summit in Ohio, and a featured presenter at the National Association of Attorneys’ General annual meeting.

Terry is hardly unique among young adults from opportunity youth backgrounds leading in their communities. In Troy, New York, Steve Figueroa has been a force behind team HERO (Helping Everyone Recognize Opportunities), a nonprofit mentoring “at risk” kids through education and service projects. HERO reaches out to those in need, working to keep young youth off the streets and provide them with a safe environment, even providing them dinner. “If I want to see a community a better place, I have to look at myself first then make a change,” says Steve about his approach to his work.

In Baltimore, Joni Holifield was inspired by the uprisings in her community after Freddie Gray’s death to found a nonprofit called Heartsmiles “that focuses on motivating, inspiring and empowering Baltimore’s Youth to reach for success and to dream big regardless of their circumstance.” Joni was raised in a single parent home that she describes as “the typical scenario of most poverty-stricken families.” Through her efforts at HeartSmiles, she says, “and those of other ordinary citizens, we will reclaim our city and put our young people on a path for long term success.”

Germain Castellanos started the SHINE Educational Leadership Program in the same Waukegan, Illinois, high school he was kicked out of. As Germain has described his own background: “Growing up amidst gang-related violence and drugs, I had a front-row view of poverty in the U.S. As a youth hanging out with the wrong crowd, I found myself on the wrong side of the law, but at the age of 21 had cleaned up my act — I was a part-time college student with a full-time manufacturing job and had a 1-year-old daughter. I understood that, along with the bad choices that I had made as a youth, poverty was the common denominator in my case and those of other youth with my background across the U.S.”

The SHINE program continues as a workforce development program, supporting high school seniors in their transition to college and career planning in a school where over 90% of students are first generation in their family to go to college.

Each of these young leaders — Terry, Steve, Joni and Germain — is tackling a particular set of challenges specific to their community. But what they have in common reflects a larger-scale trend among many who have grown up in poverty, found their way through a supportive setting that helped them make a change, and then dedicated themselves to serving the next generation behind them.

These local leaders are beginning to connect up through organizations like Opportunity Youth United, which describes itself as “a solutions-oriented movement of young adults who have experienced poverty and are dedicated to creating a society with opportunity and responsibility, love and respect, education and employment, justice and equality for all.” In just a few years, OYU has fostered in-community action teams, bringing together opportunity youth to identify the local issues affecting their lives, consider solutions, and organize around seeing those solutions implemented.

There, of course, have long been young leaders emerging from low-income communities who have created positive change, even if their work was not always noticed more widely. What may be different for this generation could result from a confluence of several factors.

Encouraging and supporting youth voice and leadership has been at the core of the YouthBuild model since its founding in 1978. But leadership training was, for many years, largely absent from other efforts and programs that offered education or work training to low-income young adults. In the last decade or two, however, the importance of treating all enrollees as future leaders has infused other programs working with opportunity youth, such as the Corps Network. Organizations dedicated to fostering leadership skills among youth from disadvantaged communities, such as the 25-year-old Public Allies, which “seeks to find and cultivate those leaders and connect them to the issues and causes that ignite their passion,” have matured and their influence spread. The leadership eco-system has grown richer.

A second factor might be the emergence of “social entrepreneurship” as a recognized and lauded career pathway. While pioneering organizations such as Ashoka have promoted the power of individuals to be change makers for decades, the term social entrepreneur only came into widespread use in the 2000s. Along with the concept becoming more widely known, support systems for encouraging social entrepreneurship have developed rapidly in the past 15 years, such as the work of Echoing Green which offers “unrestricted seed-stage funding and strategic foundational support … to emerging leaders working to bring about positive social change” and the BMe Community, which offers Social Entrepreneur Fellowships for Black men.

Another contributing factor may be the wider recognition that low-income young adults are community assets, captured by the growing use of the phrase opportunity youth. In decades past, youth who left high school without a diploma and were not working might be labeled negatively as dropouts, delinquents, at-risk or the milder “disconnected.” The term “opportunity youth” emphasizes the talent and potential of this cohort of nearly five million young adults in America today.

This reorientation in language is based on path-breaking research published in 2012 such as the Opportunity Road report by Civic Enterprises, and The Economic Value of Opportunity Youth by Clive Belfield, Henry Levin and Rachel Rosen. The Opportunity Youth Network was launched in 2013 “to capitalize on the momentum created by the White House Council on Community Solutions, which brought new visibility and focus to the needs of 16–24 year olds who are not in school and not working.” Opportunity Youth United is linking up many of current and future leaders, who are learning from each other’s experiences.

At a moment in our history when a Time Magazine 50-year retrospective on the original Kerner Commission report shows that “its haunting prediction about America becoming two societies, separate and unequal, is as relevant today as it was five decades ago,” these dedicated leaders offer a reason for hope.


David M. Abromowitz is the Chief Public Policy Officer of YouthBuild USA.  David joined YouthBuild after many years as a director (principal) in the law firm Goulston & Storrs PC, where he most recently co-chaired the firm’s real estate group. David is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington DC, and serves on the Board of MassDevelopment, the economic development finance agency for Massachusetts. He is a Vice-Chair and board member of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association, a co-founder of the Council for Energy Friendly Affordable Housing, and a past chair and founding member of both the Lawyers’ Clearinghouse on Affordable Housing and Homelessness and of the American Bar Association’s Forum Committee on Affordable Housing and Community Development.

David has been recognized by the Trailblazer award of the National Economic Development and Law Center of Oakland, California (2004), the Fair Housing Center of Boston’s Open Doors Award (2007), the “social capitalist” award of SCI Social Capital, Inc. (2008), the Distinguished Achievement Award of B’Nai B’rith Housing New England (2013), and the Vision Award of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association (2014).

This article was originally published on Medium, Under the Radar, a New Generation of Community Leaders are Launching Non-profits, 1/2/2019

Community Action Teams Come Together for Unity and Inspiration

by Luis Bautista-Morales, Coordinator of the OYUnited Los Angeles Community Action Team

The annual Opportunity Youth United Community Action Team Convening took place in December 2018, in Washington, D.C. It brought three or four leaders of each of the 17 OYUnited Community Action Teams (CATs) across the U.S. together to share and build on the work we’ve done individually and collectively in 2018.

CATs represented included: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Denver, Greenville (MS), Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, Maricopa County (AZ), Pima County (AZ), Sacramento, San Francisco, and Seattle. The CATs gathered for three days and participated in a series of conversations, training and discussions.  Lashon Amado, the OYUnited National Coordinator of the CATs, facilitated the weekend.

The CATs come from different communities but face many of the same issues and share the same goal: to increase opportunity while decreasing poverty. The CATs shared their community struggles and learned experiences from working with their respective communities to empower youth to become more civically engaged. Sharing stories, victories and lessons helped the CATs to learn from each other while building on the unified vision and gathering more strength to bring back the same excitement to their communities.

There were about 70 of us, ranging in age from 16 to 85, but mostly in our 20s and 30s, men and women, representing urban and rural areas.  We were Black, White, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian in heritage, in keeping with OYUnited’s principle of building racial equity, healing and unity.

Building Community from the Start

We kicked off our convening by introducing ourselves to each other, since our Community Action Teams have grown from 10 to 17 in 2018 (and we keep growing!). Everyone formed two circles, one inside the other—those of us on the inside of the circle introduced ourselves to the person opposite us on the outside, and answered a question posed by the facilitator. Then, we switched. After speaking deeply to each other, we moved on to address another question with the next person in the circle.

The questions were very deep and brought young community leaders together with more experienced community leaders to shed titles and share things that even close friends might not know.

“How old were you when you became aware of racism?” “If you could change one thing in your community, what would it be and why?” These were among some of the questions asked and the room suddenly became full of conversations that were hard to stop because they were powerful, interesting and created a bond.

Immediately after this exercise, CATs shared their reports from their respective cities. These reports were exciting and inspiring.

Dealing with Reality

During the report-outs, one CAT leader received notice that one of his youth had been shot by the police the night before.

As this news was shared, the room became quiet and many were left with their mouths wide open, as if the air had been sucked out and an empty familiar feeling had been left in its place. The news felt like the perfect time to be angry, to be frustrated and to yell as loud as we could. This, however, did not happen. Why? Because, like the rest of the U.S., we have all experienced this in one way or another in our own communities. We have come to receive bad news with a kind of numbness, of despair, of unlimited grief, a deeply familiar sense of the impact of being born in the wrong city, in the wrong location, with the wrong income, and on the wrong side of town.

The CAT members know that opportunities can change the outcomes for the young people they deal with. We imagine what the life of this young person would have been if he had been given the chances of a young person in the suburbs. We imagine the difference in his life if he had been presented with opportunities for education, healthcare and a chance to pursue a dream. This is the reason the CATs did not react the way most would anticipate a room full of activists might. The only way to bring change to our communities, which suffer from this and many other problems stemming from poverty, is by coming together even closer and working on bringing opportunities to the youth in our communities.

“We imagine the difference in his life if he had been presented with opportunities for education, healthcare and a chance to pursue a dream.”

Shortly after gaining our breath and coming back together, we ended the day by sharing some of the ways in which we heal ourselves and our communities. The healing methods were important since we all share the pain from issues in our communities. Some of the methods that CAT members use are long baths, deep talks with friends, yoga, time in nature, exercise, crying with trusted partners and meditation to heal and work through tragedies in our communities.

The next day, we started our day with a chant from Assata Shakur: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and respect one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

We left our three days together inspired, fired up, informed, united, ready for 2019, to continue working for a better world for all.

OYUnited: Showing Up, Standing Up and Speaking Up at the Polls

By Makayla Wright and Adam Strong

This election saw the highest youth voter turnout for midterms in almost a quarter century. In communities across the nation, OYUnited has been working hard to empower young people to vote.

This midterm election marked historical voter turnout, including among youth. CIRCLE, a nonpartisan research institution,  estimates that voter turnout among young adults (voters between the ages of 18 and 29) went up by 10 percentage points, making this midterm the highest youth participation at the polls during a midterm election in almost a quarter century.

Young people across the country made it clear at the polls that they care about our democracy, know the issues, and will show up at the polls to hold elected officials accountable.

Many people were surprised by the historic youth turnout levels, but here at OYUnited, we planned on it. Last year, we decided that if we wanted to shape the political discussion and have the issues we care about at the center  like the mass incarceration of our brothers and sisters, the lack of investment in our communities, and the lack of pathways for higher education and a living wage –  then we’d have to mobilize young people across the country to show up at the polls.

Thirteen of our Community Action Teams (CATs) across the country started planning their Civic Engagement Campaigns for the 2018 midterms a full year in advance, and began implementing this spring, focusing on civic education, voter registration and voter turnout among young adults and all community members. These communities were Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Greenville (MS), NYC, New Orleans, Phoenix, Seattle, San Francisco and Sacramento.

In Seattle, our CAT led a series of events to energize and inform young voters, and to boost voter registration.

Our anchor organization, SOAR, is an intermediary in the midst of transition. I was hired in a new position, as Youth Voice Organizer in September of 2017 and tasked with working closely with community and launching our Seattle community action team. As a transplant, I learned a lot about the region. I learned about the inequities between South King County and Seattle, I learned about the lack of youth voice, and most importantly I learned that Opportunity Youth in King County were not being engaged civically, so our team decided to engage our community in different ways.

“I learned that Opportunity Youth in King County were not being engaged civically, so our team decided to engage our community in different ways.”

We hosted open mics, an event with the secretary of state as the keynote, a block party, pizza ballot parties, door knocking, voter registration at alternative high schools, homeless shelters, and re-engagement sites.

We set up tables at youth detention facilities and in parks to register youth and talk with the community. We also collaborated with local elected officials, supported education initiatives to increase college access on the ballot, and ran campaigns on social media.

The Seattle team was busy: With only four young people serving as voter engagement ambassadors in Seattle, Kent, Auburn, Federal Way, and Burien/White Center, we successfully engaged 500 people, registered 50, and helped 10 people return their ballots to ballot drop boxes!

In Chicago, the OYUnited CAT is proud of the impact we measured this election. The CAT focused its voter turnout efforts on precinct 10 in Congressional District #4 (a precinct is the smallest division of voting areas, known in some states as an election district).  The comparative voter turnout in this precinct was as follows: in 2014 there were 147 total votes cast, and in 2018 there were 363 total votes cast –  an increase of 216 voters, which translates into a 246 percent increase.

OYUnited and our CATs are committed to continuing to help our peers register to vote, show up at the polls feeling informed and ready, and stand up and speak up for our communities and our future.

We need you to help make this happen!  Please click here to join OYUnited.

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Makayla Wright is the Youth Voice Organizer for SOAR, a Seattle-based community coalition working together to promote the healthy development of children, youth and families in Martin Luther King County and the anchor organization for the OYUnited Community Action Team (CAT) in Seattle. Makayla grew up in Leavenworth, Kansas. As the child of former Opportunity Youth who never went back to school to get their GEDs, she realized how important it was to work with young adults in similar situations. Makayla graduated from Smith College and has worked in educational outreach programs, youth residential treatment facilities, charter schools, and as an Academic Coach. As a Black woman from the Midwest, she is passionate about exploring root issues and working with communities, and now advocates for youth and young adults by convening the King County Youth Advisory Council and organizing the King County OYunited CAT.

 

adamAdam Strong is a founding member of OYUnited and member of OYUnited’s National Council of Young Leaders. A passionate advocate and lifelong learner, he has six years of experience in national policy advocacy, using his skills in policy analysis and communication & strategy he aims to influence policymakers to implement policies that increase economic mobility and decrease poverty in America. More from Adam.

 

OYUnited & CIRCLE Team Up on Survey of Young Voters’ Perceptions

By OYUnited and CIRCLE

OYUnited worked with CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, to survey young leaders in six states—Arizona, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Washington— to understand their experiences with, knowledge of and perceptions of election and voting.

We identified the main barriers that young people face in casting a ballot, and offered specific action steps to remedy them. Our initial findings are summarized in the attached PDF (a full report will be released in early 2019 and we’ll share it on OYUnited.org).

The findings are also included in the Resources section of OYunited.org. To learn more about CIRCLE, visit civicyouth.org.

(Click to read the PDF.)

Tides of Progress: The One-Year Anniversary of the Reconnecting Youth Campaign

by Adam Strong, OYUnited National Council Member

On September 26th, 2018, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Reconnecting Youth Campaign – a national campaign calling on Congress to invest in America’s future by funding education, training, national service and employment opportunities for one million Opportunity Youth (young people ages 16 to 24 who are not in school and not working). This in-person meeting not only marked one year since our launch, but it also gave us a moment to celebrate our significant success. I felt proud to report out with my colleagues that the fiscal year (FY) 2018 budget had a $118 million dollar increase in funding for programs that serve Opportunity Youth from FY2017 levels.

In a time when most thought it would be impossible for an appropriations campaign to have any success, we defied the odds. We showed that when we stand united, we can create the political will to make the investments that our country desperately needs. Every time we met we asked ourselves who is in the room, and who else needs to be.

To ensure that each of the 4.6 million Opportunity Youth in our country have a bridge to education, career, or national service opportunities, we knew we had to grow; we had to reach beyond our capacity at every level. We needed everyone. With each passing month, the campaign grew.

As a result, when we circulated our letter calling on the Congressional Appropriations Committee to increase funding for the federal programs serving Opportunity Youth, more than 50 organizations from across the country signed on.

In this first year, our quarterly in-person campaign meetings represented our membership’s commitment: we always had a full house. One of my favorite parts of our meetings is the “State of the Issues Policy & Messaging Fair,” an opportunity to get updates from many of the systems that affect Opportunity Youth, from criminal justice system, immigration, and homelessness, to safety net programming, apprenticeships, and child welfare. It is always fantastic to be able to hear and interact with experts in their respective fields in small groups.

Doing More Than Defending Against Cuts

As a campaign, we have been through a lot together. When we were in the early planning stages, I remember we had tough conversations with some of our colleagues about our goal. Some thought our ask was too high, too “aspirational,” especially in our current political climate. Many of the budgets coming out of the executive office called for cuts and even eliminations to some of our programs. We knew that if we really wanted to provide pathways to opportunity for Opportunity Youth, we had to have the audacity to try. We had to stand up and advocate for our communities, and that is what we did. Coming into our one-year anniversary we had almost 40 meetings with congressional staff, and our passion for the work didn’t stop us from having nearly a dozen more meetings later that afternoon. We were pleased that Members of Congress circulated a bipartisan “Dear Colleague” letter asking colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to increase funds for effective programs.

Our tenacity paid off, and two days later, a Labor, Health, and Human Services (Labor HHS) appropriation bill was signed into law that provides a $210 million dollar increase in funding for programs that serve Opportunity Youth in FY19 from FY17 levels.

Since the campaign has started, we have seen a $329 million dollar increase in funding for programs that serve Opportunity Youth!

The Reconnecting Youth Campaign is proud of our collective efforts to educate Members of Congress about the vast potential of Opportunity Youth and how every $1 invested in helping a young person reconnect yields more than a $5 return on investment. Investing in our youth is the best possible investment we could make. Reaching out and securing bipartisan champions to support key investments has been crucial.

While we have come a long way in our first year, we continue to work toward a more significant investment that would reconnect 1 million young people per year to education, careers, and service opportunities. We have much work to do in FY2020, but together we are making the difference.

To learn more about the Reconnecting Youth Campaign, click here.

 

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adam
Adam Strong
is a founding member of OYUnited and member of OYUnited’s National Council of Young Leaders. A passionate advocate and lifelong learner, he has six years of experience in national policy advocacy, using his skills in policy analysis and communication & strategy he aims to influence policymakers to implement policies that increase economic mobility and decrease poverty in America. More from Adam.

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#OYUvotes: National Voter Registration Day Challenge

NVRD-register!September 25 is National Voter Registration Day. Your voice matters, your vote matters and not just during presidential elections. This November, be sure to go to the polls.

OYUnited is hosting a voter registration challenge. Be sure you’re registered, and then urge your peers to register on or before September 25.

Here’s how to get involved:

    • First, are you registered and ready? Use our tool, in partnership with TurboVote, here.
    • Why do you vote? Why does it matter to you? Make a short video, image/meme or social media post and share it with the hashtags:  #OYUvotes and #NationalVoterRegistrationDay (bonus: add a hashtag for your city or town!). Be sure to include these tags so we and our partners can help amplify your post.
    • Check out Nonprofit Vote’s resource page to get the info and deadlines for Voting in Your State.
    • Questions? You can call 866-OUR-VOTE to get local information and answers to your questions (or visit the ElectionProtection.org site).

Share this with your friends and networks! Use our NVRD social media toolkit to spread the word.

YouthPOwer

Bringing Youth Power to Polls at the #YouthPower2018 Summit

youthpower

by Adam Strong, OYUnited National Council of Young Leaders

August 10, 2018 – It was a hot California day, with temperatures reaching over 100 degrees, but the high temperatures would not dissuade over 300 young changemakers from across the state of California from descending on the University of California Davis campus for the 2018 Youth Power Summit, hosted by PolicyLink in partnership with the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color and numerous local partners (see the full list here).

The purpose of the event was to strengthen youth movements across California by bringing young activists together for a three-day weekend to hone their skills, share best practices, and build community while they advocate for a better future for all Californians.

With the focus on building youth-led movements, Opportunity Youth United, of course, was there in force with our Los Angelos, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Oakland Community Action Teams (CATs) in attendance.

Their Saturday started on a high note during the regional breakout sessions focused on quality education throughout California. The young leaders split into groups by region to identify problems in their local schools, brainstorm solutions, and recognize their local decision-makers active on the specific issues. The workshop seamlessly built a sense of community across the state as young leaders began to see the common threads across their communities.

OYU at Youth Power Summit

 

Asking Questions of Candidates

As the day progressed into the afternoon, the nonpartisan Superintendent Candidate Forum went into full swing as the two leading candidates for the office of California Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurmond and Marshall Tuck, faced off and answered questions from the moderator and from a group of the young leaders.

youth power

Young people ask the candidates questions during the forum.

In addition, with a little bit of coaxing behind the scenes, we were able to arrange for representatives from our California youth-led CATs to interview the candidates in a small informal group. Both candidates were gracious enough to accept, allowing the OYUnited CAT leaders over 30 minutes of uninterrupted conversation.

The California OYUnited members showed up, stood up, and spoke up about real problems their school systems were facing and asked important questions. California has more than 6 million public school students; the Superintendent selected in November’s election will lead the country’s largest and most racially diverse school system. Both candidates were prepared to address the issues and gave thoughtful responses to each question.

Meeting with Elected Officials

Sunday was another action-packed day as the young leaders prepared for over 100 legislative meetings in total at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. The first part of the preparation was the young leaders learning about the nine bills that were identified by their organizations as good bills to support heading into the summit. Each participant chose a system they were passionate about — for example, police accountability, transparency, education or workforce issues. They then learned about the bills identified in those sectors: what the bills propose, the problems they were designed to address, and the talking points and messaging for each bill.

After these workshops, the young people met in their small groups for a training on best practices and general expectations for meeting with legislators, and of course, had fun engaging in role-plays to prepare.

Below is the list of bills chosen by the organizations and their young leaders:

  • Police Accountability
    • AB 931 (Weber) – Changes the standard by which law enforcement officers can use deadly force.
  • Policy Transparency
    • SB 1421 (Skinner)– Allow public access to police investigations, findings, and discipline relating to deadly and serious uses of force, sexual assault against a civilian, and proven dishonesty.
  • Juvenile Justice
    • SB 439 (Lara & Mitchell) – Would exclude children 11 years old and younger from prosecution in juvenile court, protecting them from the negative impacts of formal justice system involvement. |or| Setting a minimum age for Juvenile Court prosecution.
    • SB 1391(Lara & Mitchell) – Prohibits children age 14 and 15 from being tried as adults in criminal court and being sentenced to time in adult prison.
  • Sentencing Reform
    • SB 1437(Anderson & Skinner)- clarifies that a person may only be convicted of murder if the individual willingly participated in an act that results in a homicide or that was clearly intended to result in a homicide.
  • Education
    • SB 607 (Skinner) – End of willful defiance/disruption suspensions and expulsions.
    • AB 2772 (Medina) – Ethnic Studies Requirement.
  • Healing and Trauma
    • AB 1639 (E. Garcia) – California Victim Compensation Board, this bill ensures that alleged gang affiliation and immigration status don’t preclude someone from Victims Compensation Fund eligibility.
  • Workforce
    • AB 2138 (Chiu & Low) Access to Occupational Licenses for formally incarcerated people.

The capitol visit day was a strong success. Our young leaders came prepared, shared their stories, built relationships with their elected officials and helped move the needle towards a better future for all Californians.

Learn More

  • You can learn more about the Youth Power Summit here.
  • You can learn more about OYUnited’s Community Action Teams (CATs) in California and around the nation – and get involved! – here.

 

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adam
Adam Strong
is a founding member of OYUnited and member of our National Council of Young Leaders. A passionate advocate and lifelong learner, he has six years of experience in national policy advocacy, using his skills in policy analysis and communication & strategy he aims to influence policymakers to implement policies that increase economic mobility and decrease poverty in America. More from Adam.

 

MCF

OYU Builds Power with the Marguerite Casey Foundation

From May 18 to 20, more than 400 leaders gathered at the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s National Convening in Washington, DC, to celebrate their work, their communities and their power.

OYU leaders were among the grassroots leaders, students, parents, artists, spoken-word poets, and organizers who explored what power really means, what it takes to build and grow a movement of low-income families, and how to disrupt and dismantle structural causes of poverty.

During the convening, OYU leaders and members facilitated a breakout session focused on building power among young people.

In preparation for the convening, OYU created a video on the theme of power #OwnthePower2018:

Learn more about the convening on the Marguerite Casey Foundation site: Our Power. Our Community. Our Change.

Hope in Turbulent Times: Adam Strong on a New Campaign to Reconnect Youth

By: Adam Strong
Oct. 16, 2017

I don’t believe I have ever felt so hopeful in such politically turbulent times.

On September 27, I traveled to Capitol Hill for the launch of the Reconnecting Youth Campaign, a broad coalition of organizations that have come together to advocate for a solution to one of the biggest problems our country faces. There are currently 4.9 million young people ages 16 to 24 who are not in school and not working. We refer to these young people as “Opportunity Youth” for two reasons: they are seeking opportunity and they represent an untapped opportunity to employers and communities. They are individuals who want to contribute, who want a pathway to success and a strong future, but lack access to opportunity. Close to 3 million of these Opportunity Youth come from low-income families facing real systematic barriers.

At the same time, data from the Department of Labor released in June show that our nation has 6 million job vacancies. With the right supports, many Opportunity Youth could step up and fill these roles. What’s more, reconnecting a young person saves American taxpayers $65,000 over the course of that person’s career, and brings in an additional $105,000 in tax revenue. It really is a win-win.

Beyond the Numbers: Real Lives, Real Potential

To put it in perspective: across America, slightly more than 1 in 10 young people ages 16 to 24 are not in school and not working. Yet in many communities across the country, the numbers are much higher. In Southeastern Kentucky, where I’m from, the average is closer to 1 in 4 young people. This carries a social cost that goes beyond mere economics. A sense of hopelessness and helplessness is fueling increasing levels of crime and drug abuse in my area, and I believe it’s largely due to our inability to develop and provide pathways for young people.

That’s where the Reconnecting Youth Campaign: Unleashing Limitless Potential comes in. It is a federal advocacy campaign calling on Congress to invest in America’s future by funding 1 million program slots for meaningful education, training, national service and employment opportunities each year for 16- to 24-year-olds.

There are numerous federally funded programs that are highly vetted, proven to work, and that provide these young people real pathways to reconnection.  These evidence-based programs include WIOA Youth Services, Job Corps, YouthBuild, Service and Conservation Corps, AmeriCorps, National Guard Challenge Program, Reentry Employment Opportunities, and many others.

Together, such federally funded programs currently have slots for about 330,000 young people distributed in communities across the U.S. This amount doesn’t even come close to addressing the problem nor does it even come close to reaching some of the most vulnerable among us: youth in rural low-income communities.

In my region of Appalachia, for example, there is practically no program taken to scale for young people. And Appalachia is not alone. There are regions around this country that are isolated from any of these pathways for young people to turn their lives around and provide for their families.

I was lucky to connect with a YouthBuild AmeriCorps program. When I graduated from high school, I worked as a security guard at a coal mine. With the decline of the coal industry, I was laid off without options. Everyone was struggling to find work. A friend connected me to YouthBuild, where I built the foundation for my future.  First, I studied to be a pharmacy technician and then went on to work myself into the middle class as a Medical Laboratory Technologist. After working a few years in the field, I realized that the most important thing in my life was to ensure that other people had the same opportunity I had.  I’m now in graduate school studying public policy.

Coming Together to Urge Action

On that September Day, when I and other members of the Reconnecting Youth Campaign—some longtime advocates and others former Opportunity Youth like myself—met with Members of Congress on Capitol Hill, the question we received the most was, “How did you come together and why?” They were not used to meeting with so many individuals working across sectors on a single issue.

And it was the easiest answer: “This problem we face is bigger than any one of us.”

I have heard it said that politicians follow the wind: they go here and there, changing direction as the wind does. When we come together, when we stand united behind a common goal, we become the wind, forcing action. Our solutions come from a place of respect, love and positive movement, but we are determined.  And that’s why I’m filled with such hope for our future.

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Adam Strong is a founding Member of the National Council of Young Leaders and of Opportunity Youth United, a national youth-led movement to increase opportunity and decrease poverty in America. He is currently working on his Masters of Public Policy from the University of New Hampshire.