Youth of Oakland United

Youth members of PUEBLO founded YOU in 1990 to increase opportunities for young people between the ages of 12 and 21 to generate and implement solutions to the collective problems they face. The organization has served as a model for multi-racial collaboration and problem-solving in a diverse community, with a general membership of more than 100 youth who span Oakland's racial, economic, gender, and cultural diversity. YOU members are drawn from more than six language groups. The group is evenly divided between young men and young women, and between African Americans, Asians, and Latinos. Almost all members live in predominantly low-income areas of Oakland’s flatlands.

Driven and led by young residents of Oakland, YOU's efforts have yielded impressive results:

• Sponsored the City's only candidate forum by and for young people in the 1990 mayoral campaign (1990);
• Led a coalition to force the Oakland school board to reject a proposal to purchase insensitive and inaccurate social studies text books
• Produced a half-hour video documentary on the problem of hunger in Oakland classrooms which led to increased participation in school breakfast programs.
• Mobilized a broad coalition to defeat a deeply flawed youth curfew proposal, saving the city $900,000, and won a commitment to explore long-term prevention based measures aimed at reducing youth violence.
• YOU sponsored two summer leadership development programs, in conjunction with the Institute for Urban Arts, which provided organizing training, classes in silk-screening, mural, and video production, and sessions on media advocacy, meeting skills, and cross-cultural awareness and understanding to a dozen students each summer. (1995-1996)
• Helped initiate KIDS FIRST! a successful ballot measure campaign to require the City of Oakland to set aside $72 million in additional funds for youth programs over the next twelve years.
• Helped initiate the Kids First! Coalition as a permanent youth advocacy organization and leading the Coalition's first leadership academy, training 30 youth organizers. (1997)

In 1995, in a research report entitled "How Oakland Turns Its Backs on Teens: A Youth Perspective" YOU documented the lack of development programs and activities available to Oakland youth. The report, and a video which accompanied it, was based on interviews with six Oakland Council members, Recreation Center directors, non-profit managers, and dozens of parents and youth. This research nourished the creation of the KIDS FIRST! Initiative. YOU, along with allies at the East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC), Centro de Juventud, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the West Oakland Health Center, organized a grassroots coalition of youth, parents, teachers, and youth service organizations to support the Initiative. The Initiative requires the City of Oakland to set aside 2.5% of the City's budget annually to public and non-profit programs which serve children and youth (above and beyond existing expenditures for youth). A community panel of 9 youth and 10 adults is appointed to create a strategic plan for the fund and to make funding recommendations to the City Council.

For the last two summers, YOU has led a collaborative leadership development program in conjunction with NEL Centro de Juventud, EBAYC, WOHC, and Teens on Target to provide youth participants with concrete organizing experiences and applied leadership skills. In 1996 the thirty participants created public education and publicity tools for the KIDS FIRST! Initiative. These tools included a campaign promotion video, a youth magazine, two large (donated) billboards, a web site, and a music and dance anthem to be performed at large meetings and rallies. Youth participants continue to survey and recruit youth to volunteer for the KIDS FIRST! campaign.

Last year (1997), the focus of the collaborative program was student rights in the public schools. The 30 members researched students rights issues including suspension, truancy, and alternative education and produced a video, slide show, and student magazine on the issue. These tools have laid the foundation for YOU's current campaign around student rights.

Kids First! Coalition

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