At our Networking Workshop for Jewish Youth Professionals, “After the Big Day: Possibilities Post-B’nai Mitzvah”, a powerful triumvirate of youth-empowerment groups generously shared their projects, their ideas, and their philosophies. As Ma’yan’s mission directs us to do, we heard from the youth themselves about their experiences with their organizations, and were challenged to think bigger and broader about how we engage teens and about where the energy and ideas comes from for our work with teens (their parents, their teachers, or the youth themselves). Hearing about the impressive, impactful, successful work of these groups left us with hope and inspiration for what is possible.

We first heard from Erikka Diaz, a youth journalist, and Kaari Pitkin the Senior Producer at Radio Rookies on WNYC.   We heard a segment from a piece Erikka produced about her family’s struggle with poverty. The powerful stories, like Erikka’s, captured by the youth that Radio Rookies works with, are  impactful not just for the millions of listeners, but are also impactful for the youth as they develop and grow in the process of creating media about their lives. The youth learn how to find an angle on a story, learn how to techinically produce media, and in the process recognize their experiences as interesting and their voices as valuable. By following through on an intensive project like creating a radio story, they develop their accountability and their leadership. Erikka shared that for her, it was a daunting task to complete her project and she often felt like giving up.  The staff at Radio Rookies stuck with her, calling her, emailing her and did not let her quit. She said that she was so glad they pushed her, because she is so proud of the piece she created.

Kaari told us about a tool the staff uses to stay connected to the youth – the “truth booth”. Like the confessional booths on reality TV shows, the truth booth, is a safe space where at the end of a session the youth audio record their responses to a few questions that then only the staff listen to. The anonymity of the booth promotes the youth sharing fully  and is a great way for the staff to know how each of  their youth are doing, particularly as they are uncovering very personal and delicate subjects as the youth’s lives, families, and experiences at the focus of their radio stories.

We then learned about being a youth-led organization from Emerson Brisbon, a youth leader, and Yasmeen Perez, the Director of Leadership Development at  FIERCE, a membership-based organization building the leadership and power of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth of color in New York City.  . Founded by LGBTQ youth of color and still led by LGBTQ youth of color, we learned about FIERCE’s organizing model   and their  Education for Liberation Project, a 3-staged leadership development program. They stressed how central being youth-led is to who they are and how they work, and shared a helpful resource for succeeding as and truly being  a youth-led organization: Making Space - Making Change: Profiles of Youth-Led and Youth-Driven Organizations put out by the Young Wisdom Project of the Movement Strategy Center in Oakland, California.
We heard from FIERCE important lessons for succeeding with youth which included their programs not being like or feeling like school at all and the importance of developing and sustaining relationships with each youth. The relationship building is supported by their doing regular one-to-one meetings with the youth about their own leadership, about their political analysis, about their commitment to the organization, their challenges, their lives and their goals for their development and growth. 

FIERCE’s program includes political analysis and consciousness raising, concrete organizing skill building and in the third year opportunities to work as interns at FIERCE, providing their youth with valuable work experience. FIERCE’s education model is a popular education model, one that is accessible, relevant, interactive, egalitarian, historic, inclusive, visionary, strategic and involves the whole person. This model relies on praxis,  the importance of doing education that leads to action.

Last but not least, we heard about youth empowerment and rock n’ roll from Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls Executive Director, Karla Schickele and from a veteran camper, Emily Carpenter. Karla was clear to say at the outset that the Rock Camp is not an arts program but is instead a youth empowerment organization. They bring together girls who never knew each other before, may have never picked up a musical instrument before and in a week teach them what they need to know about instruments, about the history of women rockers, and even self-defense training and relationship building. On the first day they are formed into bands and on the last day they perform in a concert . They believe that challenging girls to take a risk, to write a song with girls they have never met before, to learn how to play an instrument and then to perform in front of hundreds of people, is a valuable experience for girls in developing their self-esteem, in teaching them that their voices are valuable and in their understanding that they can do anything!

One of the only rules they say they have is that when they miss a note or hit a wrong beat, there is no saying “I’m sorry!”, instead they have to say “I rock!”. They see this as a very valuable contradiction to girls’ and womens’ predilection to apologize, and as a tool for building their self-confidence. Emily, the veteran camper, said that for her the experience of being thrown in with girls that she otherwise never would meet, let alone befriend, was powerful and that she loves the sense of self-confidence she developed through being a group of all girls and learning that it is OK to think you are cute and that everyone should think they are cute!

We were lucky enough to then have in the room Naomi Less of Jewish Chicks Rock, who is creating a program somewhat like Willie Mae, but for Jewish girls. Hers is an effort to promote girls instrumentalists and singers and toward them finding (as Carol Gilligan teaches)and holding onto their voices as they enter adulthood.

Tehila Wise from Congregation Kolot Chayeinu in Brooklyn shared about her community’s innovative model of doing tzedakah. They focus on the shoresh/root of the word tzedakah which is tzedek, meaning righteousness or justice. Their tzedakah program, therefore, is rooted in social change work, not the more common understanding of tzedakah as charity. They have an innovative program for their b’nai mitzvah students’ tzedakah projects that is a 3 year program—the first year the youth learn together monthly on various issues at root of doing social change work—white privilege, class privilege, power, oppression, xenophobia and more. This learning prepares them  for the next stage, where they work 5-7 hours a month with partner organizations in Brooklyn that are doing economic justice work, promoting GLBTQ rights, fighting racial discrimination, creating access to local, fresh food, and more.  In the final stage of the program, the year after the student’s bar/t mitzvah, they are required to share with the entire congregation some of what they learned...this can be through making media about it, leading a study session, giving a dvar torah, or whatever they choose, but the requirement is that they then bring back to the community their reflections and on their work.