youth empowerment project
get paid to enhance your leadership skills!
As a participant in the Youth Empowerment Project, you would get paid $25 for every two hours spent learning and empowering yourself to tackle the challenges inherent in protecting our communities and your future. In an effort to limit the spread of COVID-19 in our communities our workshop pods and activities currently take place over Zoom! So, you can empower yourself while getting paid from the safety and comfort of your house.
These are just some of the examples of activities and learning pods available through zoom:
Computer literacy
Financial literacy
Know your rights concerning police contact
Community organizing
Meeting public officials
Dance
Martial Arts
Research corporations that supply police equipment
Research alternative policing approaches and collect data on police conduct
Mass incarceration and social control
Methods in combating white supremacy
Requirements:
Must be an N.Y.C. resident
Must be 16 to 24 years-old
what is the youth empowerment project?
The Youth Empowerment Project is an Alliance of Families for Justice educational initiative aimed at training future community leaders.
WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A REAWAKENING…
Cities across America have erupted with street protests in the wake of the murder by four Minneapolis police officers of George Floyd, which was viewed by millions on social media and television. The video of his murder, recorded by a brave 17-year-old girl, sparked a new outcry of “Black Lives Matter”, and a heightened examination and condemnation of not only police brutality but systemic racism. Demands for system change have included a call to defund the police and to destroy institutional racism in all of its insidious forms.
WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF ACTION…
The deafening shots that have claimed the lives of countless black and brown people have awoken millions of young people; millions who have mobilized; millions who have taken to the streets and participated in daily protests. This new surge in activism presents all of us with a perfect opportunity to harness this energy and build off of it to develop leadership skills, particularly amongst you, the youth who are most marginalized - those whose lives are directly impacted by mass incarceration, who are the most vulnerable to attacks by the police, who have been the historical targets of economic oppression and racism.
BUT WE HAVE TO STAY WOKE AND KEEP ACTING IF WE WANT CHANGE…
While defunding the police is an important objective, it must be part of a larger strategy to address mass incarceration and the centuries of racism and oppression that our Black and Brown communities have endured. That strategy, to combat white supremacy and liberate our communities from the yoke of institutional oppression, must be led and created by you, the very people most directly impacted by them. You have an essential role to play in this work, and it is the goal of the Alliance of Families for Justice’s Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) to provide you with the positive space and training you need to be effective leaders in our community. The security and change our communities deserve will not come falling from the sky nor will it be a gift, but must be guaranteed, fought for, and protected by you, the future of our community.
Trying to get paid and help your community while you help yourself? Contact us for more information at:
