Leadership Link

Organization: Young Voices (YV) transforms urban Rhode Island youth into powerful advocates who have a voice in every aspect of their lives. Our programs guide young adults to understand important issues, think strategically, and make their voices heard. Since 2006, we have inspired over 1,000 low-income students of color to make a difference in their schools, their state, and their world. Through yearlong civic engagement programs and leadership development projects, youth gain essential skills in public speaking, critical analysis, and effective communication. YV provides young people with the rare opportunity to occupy executive positions at nearly every organizational level, relating the truth of their lived experience to adults and creating positive ripple effects across our educational landscape.

Opportunity: We know that BIPOC youth in Rhode Island can lack meaningful interactions with caring mentors who look like them, come from the same communities, and have shared the struggles of being a first-generation college student living within an imbalanced system. Innovations like the Young Voices Mentoring Program provide youth with new opportunities to see their own aspirations reflected in the eyes of adults who have successfully navigated those same systems to achieve distinction in their respective fields. The collaborative, hands-on nature of these relationships can reach across socioeconomic barriers dividing our young people from a lifetime of career success. Through intensive one-on-one mentoring sessions, quarterly networking events, and an ongoing guest speaker series, as many as 50 youth participants will become fully immersed in the world of opportunities our intergenerational leadership model can provide. Youth will not only gain valuable technical knowledge across several disciplines, but affirm their identities through the counsel of caring role models whose lived experiences closely mirror their own. Our mentors will be instrumental toward bridging the proficiency gaps that adversely affect first-generation students, as well as helping to establish a pipeline of professional support and internship opportunities once our youth enter the postsecondary environment.