Empowering Young People of Colour: A Toolkit
In the summer of 2020, TakingITGlobal’s Adobe Creativity Grants and the Fully Focused Youth team planned and led conversational opportunities for young people of colour to connect in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. This led to a series of conversations where young people were able to share their experiences and the barriers that impact their daily lives as a young Black person in their respective communities.
Young people from Canada, the USA, and the UK led this series of conversations and collaborative opportunities that produced an inclusive environment for young people to share their experiences as a young Black person in their communities, their experience with racism, and how community leaders and organizations can support their healing process, and create safer spaces to catalyze change. This inclusive environment allowed youth to participate in the method they felt most comfortable with, such as: being a panelist on the live video calls, sharing points through chat, and/or sharing their ideas through a collaborative Google Doc. These conversations and ideation sessions resulted in a LIVE three hour-long conversation,Young Black Voices, that was hosted on the Fully Focused YouTube channel: Million Youth Media.
The topics and issues discussed in the LIVE event resulted in a 100% youth-curated self-evaluation toolkit for community leaders and youth organizations. This toolkit, Empowering Young People of Colour, provides youth organizations with a framework and multiple approaches to support tackling the issue of racism. It identifies four key priority areas of consideration:
- Youth Voice & Empowerment
- Knowledge & Education
- Community Empowerment
- Opportunity & Growth
Each of these key priority areas takes you through a set of guided questions to review and reflect on your organizational best practices and how you can incorporate a framework for accountability into these to create safer spaces to empower young people of colour within your organizations. The ideas generated through this initiative are a reflection of what is possible to achieve when young people are provided with safer spaces to express themselves and with resources and guidance to take tangible actions.
We encourage organization and community leaders alike to use this toolkit to review and reflect on organizational practices and how you can incorporate a framework for accountability into your best practices. You can access a FREE digital version of this toolkit on our website.
