Empowering Young Leaders for Juvenile Justice

Nearly 120 teens and young adults from 27 different states met in Washington, D.C. last week to participate in the annual Coalition for Juvenile Justice’s summit, Empowering Young Leaders for Juvenile Justice Reform.
The Summit, which seeks to cultivate and empower young juvenile justice advocates, invited 16-30 year olds passionate about juvenile justice advocacy to a weekend filled with youth advisory meetings and presentations on topics such as disproportionate minority contact and the school-to-prison pipeline.
During one session discussing youth organizing and advocacy, Rashad Hawkins, Youth Organizer at Just Kids Partnership, urged participants to think strategically about how they want to effect change. Additionally, Hawkins walked through the steps of how to organize and advocate, advising participants to:

• Set short-term, intermediate and long-term goals
• Create resource pools of money, in-kind goods and space
• Identify primary and secondary target individuals that can help implement change sought
• Use the media to promote causes
• Use tactics, such as events, public hearings or strikes that make sense to the audience.

For more information about empowering young leaders, visit the Youth Summit: Empowering Young Leaders for Juvenile Justice Reform page. 
 

Avery Klein is a digital and social media intern at Prichard Communications. She is from Springfield, Missouri where she attends Missouri State University and is studying public relations, advertising and promotions, and ethical leadership. She loves traveling, discovering new restaurants, social media and her two darling dogs.