Guest blog by Executive Director, Noel Shroeder at Girls Rock! DC
The Youth Leaders program was initially designed to be a safe space for young folks to participate more actively in the decision-making of Girls Rock! DC, with opportunities for collaboration and relationship building among them Youth Leaders themselves and for mentorship from Girls Rock! DC staff. We saw starkly in the past two cohorts how important those relationship-building activities within a safe environment were for our Youth Leaders. Our weekly meetings often provided a container for them to dive into topics impacting their day-to-day lives that went beyond the music and fundamental leadership conversations we’d planned to have. It was evident that bigger systemic issues and world conflicts and situations were taking a huge toll on their mental health and sense of feeling helpless/hopeless as a young person. Gun violence, peer suicide, and genocide were issues that they expressed a massive desire to “do something” about and take some sort of action but were unsure where to start. Because our curriculum already emphasized the intersection of art and activism, we were able to incorporate lessons about organizing, justice, and activism.
To us, this demonstrated a strong need to integrate into the curriculum for the Fall 2024 cohort an even bigger focus on how young people can leverage the power and privilege that they have to enact real change in their communities, and how us, as leaders and mentors can better guide them into taking real action in the causes that are the most important to them. It is important that we are able to validate that what they are witnessing and feeling is real and valid, and their voice and opinions do matter. We’ve already seen the result of prioritizing this work: Youth Leaders chose “Collective Rebellion” as the theme for this year’s Summer Camps and helped select workshop topics for the sessions, like artivism and youth activism (the latter being co-led by a Youth Leader). Following these workshops, we saw campers come to camp the next day with posters and petitions advocating for the camp-related issues they cared about. Without being asked, they put what they learned into action and showed that their voices have power. While the issues may be comparatively minor, being able to practice activism in a safe environment is just the beginning and prepares them to make greater change in the community and world.
The Youth Leaders have a ton of big ideas that they’d like to execute. Visit Girls Rock! DC to learn more about how community members can partner with the organization to turn these ideas into reality.