Youth Empowerment Summit – YES!
As the National Immigrant Youth Alliance we are committed to sharing the tools and knowledge necessary to effectively organize around issues that affect our immigrant communities. NIYA’s Youth Empowerment Summit is a day-long organizing and leadership training designed to:
- Teach basic community organizing skills.
- Help participants learn to tell their own stories and speak in public.
- Train participants in the use of social media tools for outreach and organizing.
- Provide an insider’s overview of the immigration debate.
- Build leadership teams of five to six people in a geographic area.
- Conduct a brief action to give participants a chance to practice newly learned skill.
Members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance have conducted trainings in California, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia, among other states.
In March, DREAM Activist Virginia brought together students from Harrisonburgh, Fredericksburg, Winchester, Woodstock, Alexandria and Arlington for the first ever undocumented youth-led training in that state. As a result of the YES training, undocumented youth in Virginia organized a statewide day of action on April 7th in which they implemented the actions they began planning at the summit. These youth have continued to organize in their local communities.
DreamActivist Pennsylvania held its YES training on February 19th. The training was attended by close to 40 youth and allies from across the state. As stated by DreamActivist Pennsylvania founder, Maria, “we were not only able to form new friendships, but we were able to work together to organize in hopes of empowering other immigrant youth to join us.” Maria and DreamActvist Pennsylvania organized their first “Coming out of the Shadows” rally in Philadelphia a month later. During the rally, 6 undocumented youth who had learned how to tell their stories during the training were able to come out as undocumented, unafraid and unapologetic for the first time. Most recently, DreamActivist Pennsylvania joined legislators and other community members in the introduction of the Pennsylvania Dream Act -
In April, members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance traveled to Georgia to hold a YES training with local youth in Atlanta, Georgia. The result was the formation of the Georgia Undocumented Youth Alliance – GUYA. These undocumented youth led organization has been instrumental in fighting against the ban of undocumented youth to the top-five universities in the state and to anti-immigrant legislations like HB87. These students, mostly of high school age, have organized walk-outs and coming out events inside the state capitol, which marked the first time in the state of Georgia that an undocumented person publicly declared their status inside the place where anti-immigrant hate has been shaped in the form of bills like HB87.
NIYA’s goal is to do similar trainings in as many states as possible. If you’d like to have NIYA come to your city and hold a Youth Empowerment Summit, get in contact with us. E-mail: yes@theniya.org
Support us by donating to the Youth Empowerment Summit fund so we can continue to share resources and knowledge with as many undocumented youth as possible.
Pennsylvania YES Training
