7 Different Journeys, 1 Shared Path: 2021 EYV Fellowship Reflections
What An Incredible Cohort!
Thank you to our amazing program team, 32 youth partners and 11 member organizations who worked to amplify youth leadership and agency within the Network last school year!
Despite constant challenges, the 2021 cohort truly embodied the saying “worry less and do your Best” - We The Urban.
Adult partners carved out intentional space within their organizations to increase connection and youth-led communication during a time when everything feels like too much. Youth gained skills in collaboration and realized just how much they were capable of achieving with community care practices.
See what students had to say about their experiences and fellowship projects below.
1. Generating a Data Bank for GC Alumni @ Generation Citizen
Fellow: Radeha Haque
Adult Partner: Jessica Wise
About me
I am Radeha and I work for Generation Citizen, a non profit organization that emphasizes civics education in school classrooms. My adult partner, Jessica who is also the senior associate for Generation Citizen supported me when I created surveys to engage alumni and created a data bank for future participants to engage and network with alumni. Jessica has helped me get connected with different cohorts of GC programs and seek out their advice and current endeavors. With her feedback to my questions, I was able to create a thorough survey asking important questions and advice that are relevant to young people. I reached more than 50 alumni and future participants in GC’s network. Some challenges that I came across were sharing my survey. It was difficult to collect enough responses, but I kept emailing and texting group chat to previous members to get them to connect. I hope to continue to build these connections and create a sustainable method for young people to reach out to other young people.
What brought you into the project journey?
I have participated in Generation Citizen’s programs such as their Community Fellowship (CCF) and Student Leadership Program (SLB). I know firsthand how tricky it was to dive into the professional world of internships.
Project Description
The goal of this survey is to connect alumni to future CCF and SLB members to connect with and reach out for mentorship. Participants who care about the same issues might want to learn the CCF/SLB experience from someone who has already been through it or connect with you for opportunities and advice on advocating for the issue you care about! Through this survey, I collected what lessons alumni learned from CCF experience, what internship they did, what their civics project was in Generation Citizen school year curriculum (if they did one), advice they can give to future CCFers/SLBers and what they have been doing now! All the responses are to ensure that the next year's cohort gets familiar with the tight knit community that CCF and SLB respectively provide. This can hopefully be shared with CCF/SLB Adult Supervisor and Board Chairs and be accessible to future cohorts.
What was it like at the first EYV Youth-Adult summit? Describe your experiences preparing for the summit; what was it like collecting feedback, working with adult partners, and getting to the finish line with your project?
At the first summit, I was a bit nervous because I wasn’t sure if my project was achievable and sustainable. After feedback on ways I can ensure specificity and privacy in creating my survey, I was excited to write and meet weekly with my mentor to check my survey. I anticipate getting more responses and keeping the data bank going.
2. Building Stronger Relationships @ Harlem Children’s Zone
Fellows: Megan Ford, Massesse Diaby, Jenny Bradley-Washington
Adult partner: Deirdre Schwiring
The relationship between students and staff is really important. As a team of three we realized how some challenges students face at our organization is communication. An opportunity that was used for improvement was joining the student council so that my peers' opinions and ideas can be voiced. This helped increase the youth voice but there's always more that can be done.
As a group we came up with the idea to hold a zoom call where students and staff are able to interact with each other and get a better understanding of each other's feelings. After planning and laying everything out we quickly realized that we didn't have enough time to fully have the zoom call up and working. So we had to find something quick and something that wouldn't take too much time to do. This was a little frustrating because we took so much time making a plan and not going through with it. It also gave us an advantage because it gave us a layout and idea of what our new plan would be about.
We came up with the idea to make a survey to see the good and bad in our organization and how students feel. Once we had the survey questions we checked in with our adult partner. She helped us improve our questions and gave us some feedback.
We came up with the idea to make a survey to see the good and bad in our organization and how students feel.
3. LOVE Mentoring @ Latinas On The Verge Of Excellence
Fellows: Bonnie Samaniego, Hailly Macias, Anarosa Encarnacion, Saica Senat
Adult partner: Stephanie Cruz
What brought you into the project journey?
Helping other people to collaborate with one another and expanding our program to make people feel comfortable it’s what inspired me.
Project Description
Our goal is to make LOVE mentoring more engageable.
What was it like at the first EYV Youth-Adult summit?
It helped us tremendously because we were able to obtain ideas that were good for our organization. It helped to realize what we were doing well and what we were not. I’m really proud of how far we have come and the individual progress we have made.
Reflection
By being part of LOVE mentoring it has helped us to understand and appreciate the individuals we are. We have completed activities that has created a safe environment for everyone and we hope that it continues to other students as well.
4. Building Communications Through Relationships @ The Opportunity Network
Fellows: Muna Saeed, Zybel Abroguena, Afsana Ayshi, Anngelise Benitez
Adult Partner: Dione Lomando
Project Description
We had the opportunity to improve the communication between OppNet fellows and the staff in order to make the services more accessible and pleasing to us!
We created a spreadsheet consisting of the contact information of specific staff members so that fellows can reach out to them when they need it!
We reached out to other fellows who are not part of EYV for suggestions and feedback to make sure we are providing other fellows with the most effective communication services they deserve!
We also have asked for feedback from adult partners and other staff to ensure their availability for different services that Opportunity Network offers.
Goals
Fellows will be able to connect, communicate, and contact a facilitator
Fellows can connect to other fellows
There is no longer confusion on who to contact when faced with an issue
Purposes
Communication is key to running a program and discussing issues, conflicts, ideas, opinions, and etc hence why is it important to establish a way to connect students to facilitators (students will no longer feel their thoughts are neglected and will be represented)
With the digital change in learning children/fellows can feel shy online and not feel very active in this learning environment, connecting to other fellows can make us feel less lonely, have people to talk to and collaborate with, and can make kids more inspired to participate and reach out to said new friends and further building the connection/network our community has with one another.
Confusion can cause a student to give up on their issues or on a question, which hindered their will to participate and reach out, if students have an easy time connecting and getting answers then they are more likely to reach back out again to these facilitators, take more risks/chances to participate, and feel comfortable speaking.
5. Creating Meaningful Relationships With Counselors @ Goddard Riverside Options Program
Fellows: Fableeha Leuna, Darren Baptiste, Jessie Castaneda, Shayra Nunez
Adult Partner: Aledra Floyd
What brought you into the project journey?
Darren: What I think has brought us through this journey is understanding how we can best utilize our voices as students, and learn how to bring change in the programs that affect us.
Shayra: What brought me into the journey was making sure I developed my leadership and communication skills and also making sure I was helping to make a difference.
Project Description
Create more meaningful and long lasting relationships between students and counselors, while making counselors more accessible. In order to do this, youth partners plan to make counselor Google Calendar appointment sign ups for students and host an event that brings everyone together. The event will allow students to get to know their counselors more and build a stronger relationship.
What was it like at the first EYV Youth-Adult summit?
Darren: the first summit was very interesting and fun to be able to have a say in how our programs are run, and in what ways we can improve the community.
Shayra: for me it has definitely been a process of growth. I feel like at the beginning of the summit, I had trouble articulating my thoughts and emotions in relation to the organization but as I went along I was able to communicate and build the teamwork skills to help identify an issue and work towards solutions.
Reflection
I think it was an effective way of implementing my voice as a youth partner as I along with my team members planned and successfully conducted the workshop. I felt like my voice was heard. We respected each other’s opinion and were able to successfully give each other constructive criticism.
6. Youth Leadership @ Sadie Nash
Fellows: Kelly Hilaire, Sage Augustin, Chimdindu Okafor, and Most Alam
Adult Partners: Patricia Noel and Jessica Fei
What brought you into the project journey?
Going into it we had goals to achieve the main two problems, accessibility and comfortability. In planning the summit, there weren’t any serious disagreements between the youth and adults. Feedback from each individual played a role in how each person wanted to be treated, how we discussed certain topics, and so on. Our summit is June 6, so at the moment we do not have data on how everything turned out.
Project Description
Our project centered around bringing the entire SNLP community together in a Summit- styled program. We really wanted to center learning and community as the basis of our Summit. So, we will have 4 different groups at the summit, Dissecting Gender Inequality, Defining Racism, Redefining Self Care, and Storytelling, which will dive deeper into the different aspects of strength within our SNLP community. They will be structured like workshops, to make it accessible and interactive for our guests.
7. SEO HW Crew @ SEO Scholars
Fellows: Marcel Apatewen, Helen Sanchez, Camila Pierre, and Somaiya Ahmed
Adult Partner: Kenny Jean
What brought you into the project journey?
During the fall of 2020 we joined forces in hopes of enacting change within the SEO Scholars community. With the help of our adult partner, Kenny Jean, we worked to identify and create solutions for challenges within programming. After four months of collaboratively brainstorming, we came up with the SEO HW Crew initiative. Our initiative sets out to support students and staff by cultivating open community work spaces.
Project Description
With the SEO HW Crew, we aimed to cultivate a space where SEO students and staff could come together and do work, especially because of the pandemic. We have all come to see just how valuable human interaction is. This space allows for everyone to regain that same feeling. We hope that this space makes everyone both comfortable and motivated to complete their work in a nice, relaxed environment amongst and facilitated by their peers.
What was it like at the first EYV Youth-Adult summit?
The process of creating and launching the SEO HW Crew initiative was rigorously rewarding. As a team we honed our problem solving skills, engaged in event planning, and most importantly exercised our leadership and advocacy. We did all of this while also having fun! Don’t believe me?!
Here’s a cool little commercial we made for our project: SEO HW CREW AD Enjoy :)
Reflection
The SEO Scholar youth voices have come together in order to create a homework crew available to students and staff in the organization. They have put together a presentation including multiple concerns of the organization from a student’s perspective. It also includes possible solutions to these concerns that the SEO Scholar youth voices believed to improve the organization overall. The presentation was displayed to adult partner, Kenny Jean, who is also a 12th grade Program Manager in SEO, and numerous other staff members. They scheduled weekly meetings to continue working on making the solution a reality for the students.
Special Thanks
The 2021-22 EYV Member Orgs
HCZ Promise Academy
Latinas On the Verge of Excellence
The Opportunity Network
Community of Unity
SEO Scholars
OneGoal
CitySquash
Options Center
Generation Citizen
Sadie Nash
NYC Mission Society at Emma Lazarus High School
The EYV Program Team
Omar Khan
Fatou Diokhane
Leslie Cordero
Addas Ahmad
Sooah Rho