Chicago Youth Initiating Change

Location: Chicago, IL

Chicago Youth Initiating Change is a student-led organization that will ensure every school is designed to provide every student with a relevant and challenging education that prepares us to reach our greatest potential and face the real world. We, the students, with help from our teachers, families and friends, will identify systemic inequalities, injustices, and inefficiencies in our schools and communities and push to resolve them through constructive means.

Highlights:

Chicago Youth Initiating Change (CYIC) is a grassroots organization that brings together youth and teachers from diverse racial, economic and geographic backgrounds to create an educational space to explore social justice issues and carry out social justice initiatives. CYIC is a student and teacher led organization comprised of a wide array of Chicago area public, private, alternative, and charter school members.

We meet bi-monthly to share stories, organize and support social justice-based campaigns, & events, schedule school exchanges and plan the annual CYIC Social Justice Student Expo.

• produce a comprehensive student, teacher, and community plan to improve ourselves, our schools, and our communities – and take action to implement it.
• organize and participate in events and actions that unite students, teachers and supporters and culminate in the annual Social Justice Student Expo.
• critique our current learning and fight for student-inspired curriculum that challenges and motivates us to think critically, be literate, and solve real-world problems.
• coordinate an independent democratic student leadership structure inclusive of all schools city-wide to work diligently towards our mission and goals.
• break down historical segregation to foster cross-school and cross-cultural relationships that create powerful student movements for social justice.

Links:

• http://www.cyicexpo.org/ - Chicago Youth Initiating Change
• https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B5ygekrFGntdOTdkOWYxY2UtODAyMS00NmI5LTljZjYtNzdiNGFlNmIzNjJk&hl=en - CYIC Classroom Action Guide

Submitted by Jason Lacoste on: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - 12:32 pm

Tags for this entry:
social justice, youth rights, chicago youth inititating change