PSE to host Just Youth Circle Tour: Youth Listening Sessions to Improve Racial Equity and Shared Prosperity
The Partnership for Southern Equity (PSE), seizing the opportunity to engage youth in governance and decision-making processes through its YES! For Equity youth component, is hosting the Just Youth Circle Tour, a series of youth-based Community Listening Sessions designed to address and improve racial equity and shared prosperity for all citizens.
The Just Youth Circle (JYC) is an ecosystem of youth and adult partnerships across the American South, consisting of youth organizers, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, government officials, philanthropic groups and community coalitions. The JYC is designed to cultivate the collective voices of youth impacted the most by unjust systems of oppression to develop an organized regional agenda for truth, freedom and liberation for all people.
The Community Listening Sessions are planned for the following locations:
Thursday, June 29, in Charlotte, NC, 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM at the University of North Carolina Charlotte
Friday, June 30, in Greensboro, NC, 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM at North Carolina A&T University
Saturday, July 1, in Durham, NC, 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM at North Carolina Central University
These sessions are the first leg of the tour, which will cover 11 states in the southeast region by 2025. The tour will connect with partners that are youth-serving or youth lead organizations to build an ecosystem of youth power-building organizations to advance racial equity.
“PSE firmly believes that youth engagement and leadership are essential to the Equity Movement,” said Justin Sykes, PSE’s Just Growth Associate and coordinator of the JYC Tour. “Most of our servants in the Civil Rights Movement were under the age of 25 when they led marches, boycotts, and sit-ins. So, it is imperative to create a youth-led, brave space where youth and their adult allies can grow movements that advance racial equity.”
The Just Youth Circle is an opportunity to spend time with groups and individuals to learn more about the issues that mean the most to these communities from a youth perspective, the barriers that impact progress, and the support that the Just Youth Circle can provide.
Acquired by PSE in 2020, YES! for Equity is a national training and movement-building force built on the belief that racial equity and intergenerational power-sharing are essential to creating community change. Founded in January 2008, as Youth Empowered Solutions (YES!), YES! developed the nationally recognized YES! Youth Power Model® for social change. YES! for Equity applies The Model to support the development of youth as civic leaders and to support adults and organizations to change harmful policies and practices that negatively impact Black youth and historically marginalized youth of color.
YES! for Equity’s focus is to inspire and prepare youth to partner with adult allies to carry on and lead the work of equity in order to realize a new American South. A place where systems of white oppression are disrupted and dismantled, fully realizing a region where everyone has what they need to reach their full potential.
About The Partnership for Southern Equity: Based in Atlanta, PSE is a nonprofit organization that advances policies and institutional actions that promote racial equity and shared prosperity for all in the growth of metropolitan Atlanta and the American South. Through forums, research, and organizing efforts, PSE brings together the regional community to lift up and encourage just, sustainable, and civic practices for balanced growth and opportunity. www.psequity.org
