Youth Leadership Council

Overview

In partnership with the Healthy Intergenerational Masculinity Initiative, the Youth Leadership Council was created to support the leadership development, community engagement, and empowerment of masculine identified youth and their positive impact throughout Southern Arizona. The YLC meets periodically to provide oversight, feedback, and perspective to the HIM initiative. Youth leaders will serve as accountability partners to bring equitable youth voices to the table, to inform the strategic implementation of the initiative. Through this youth-adult partnership where collective action is fostered and community care is generated. All youth leaders will be compensated for their time, and will develop skills relevant to building leadership skills, developing an elevated consciousness around issues of gender and masculinity, and build meaningful relationships in the community. The HIM Initiative Youth Leadership Council members are committed to fostering healthy relationships with masculine-identified youth and our greater Southern Arizona community.

Youth Leadership Council Purpose

The YLC exists to provide accountability, leadership, and oversight to the HIM Initiative, while also providing selected youth with compensation for their time, and a transformative year-long training experience, specializing in anti-racist leadership, healthy masculinity, transformative justice, community organizing, social change, and peace-making.

An understanding of the core concepts about systemic power and oppression to that they can begin their journey of service within the HIM Initiative;

Opportunities to connect their own personal experiences of pain and hope to these broader social-political structures;

A space to model, experiment, and practice healthy masculinity together;

Safe adults who can model, validate, and honor their journey; and

Food, fun, and friendship.

The HIM Initiative is a systems level change initiative that aims to amplify the resources and supports available for masculine identified BIPOC youth in Tucson & Southern Arizona.

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