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BPNC is a community-based organization serving a predominantly Latino and immigrant community on Chicago’s south-west side. The mission of BPNC is to build community capacity and empower local residents including girls, women, members of the LGBTQ community, and people with criminal records to advocate for their rights. Current BPNC initiatives focus on affordable housing, all forms of violence, criminal justice system reform, immigrants’ rights, school reform, zero tolerance, comprehensive sex education, gender equity and LGBTQ rights.
FUFA is a city-wide coalition of girls and young women working to end violence against girls and women through media justice campaigns. FUFA’s model combines analysis and action. FUFA is a project of Women & Girls CAN, which helps women and girls to develop leadership skills to take action and promote social justice on issues that matter most to them. Through Women & Girls CAN, women and girls learn from one another to raise consciousness, unite to build connections between communities, and build power to take collective action.
The mission of ICAH is to promote a positive approach to adolescent sexual health and comprehensive support for young parents. ICAH’s strategies to support this mission include the development of young leaders, policy analysis and development, advocacy, and training of both youth and adults.
To dispel the myth of Korean and Asian Americans as quiet and passive, The Korean American Resource & Cultural Center’s youth participants named their youth program “Shout Out.” Shout Out fights racism and promotes positive images of Korean and Asian Americans through a workshop series, which attracts twenty-five to thirty high school students per month, to develop the organizing and leadership skills of Korean and Asian American youth with the long-term goal of supporting a new generation of activists for the future! KRCC’s youth helped to organize the May 1st 2006 March for Immigrant Rights in Chicago and are in the process of organizing around the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act – a new bill introduced into the Senate in Nov 2005 that would allow eligible undocumented students to legalize their immigration status in order to get a job or go to college – by creating a Yearbook, a collection of DREAM Act eligible student profiles that will be sent to senators and representatives, and helping to plan a DREAM Act campaign fundraiser.
YAWP! is a social justice-based writing and performance workshop for Chicago-area Asian Pacific Islander American youth. YAWP is a safe space where they share their common stories, take creative risks, learn essential skills in community-building, and explore the social, economic, cultural, and health issues that affect their lives. They’ve enabled youth participation in nationwide conferences like the 2003 National Poetry Slam in Minneapolis, and the 2005 National APIA Spoken Word and Poetry Summit. Yawpers (as they call themselves) are excited to share their Curriculum Development project that they are planning for Summer 2007, where they are connecting with other organizations, looking at national arts standards, and revising policies and guidelines which they hope will serve as a replicable teaching methodology that can be used as a resource for other youth arts/activist organizations looking to build youth leadership as workshop facilitators of the future!
The Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team (YWAT) grew out of the efforts of young women who expressed concern about the rampant street violence and harassment in their neighborhood in 2003. This group of 13 young women between the ages of 13-19 from the Rogers Park Community is committed to researching issues of violence against women and girls, raising awareness of the problem, and working to reduce its prevalence and impact. The YWAT has conducted research about girls’ attitudes towards street harassment which they have shared results and recommendations with their elected officials. They have organized community forums and the Citywide Day of Action against Street Harassment, which was documented on DVD in collaboration with Beyondmedia Education, as part of their RESPECT Campaign in Rogers Park in May 2006. (A second Citywide Day of Action will have already happened in May 2007!) YWAT has also developed a documentary called Real Talk: Engaging Young Men as Allies and a Discussion Guide to accompany the documentary and created a Zine to showcase some of the other collective and individual actions that took place last May during the Day of Action.
Run by girls and women with life experience in the sex trade and street economies, the Young Women’s Empowerment Project (YWEP) offers safe, respectful, free-of-judgment spaces for girls and young women (ages 12-23) impacted by the sex trade and street economies so that they can recognize their goals, dreams and desires. They are a youth leadership organization grounded in harm reduction and social justice organizing. The girls have created Zines about drugs, the sex trade, and violence against girls and social justice, and their weekly social justice group is in the process of researching their first local campaign to improve the lives of girls and young women involved in the sex trade! They have led numerous workshops for social workers about how to work with girls in the sex trade and work in harm reduction. They are also a member of Justice Now and the Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment that advocates for gender justice and to stop prison expansion and reproductive oppression in prison.