Putting Young People in the Driver’s Seat

By Cierra Kaler-Jones and Karen Lee

SDX Living Library | Photo by Oreoluwa Akinyode

We hear it all the time: “Children are the future.” But how often do we really let kids lead the way in building a more equitable, just future? 

Last year, the Equity Lab launched the inaugural cohort of Seeding Disruption Remix (SDX), a Washington, DC-based youth organizing fellowship. Over the course of the school year, we bring together high school students from across the DC area to encourage them in their interests as they become life-long disruptors for racial and social justice. 

A youth fellowship focused on social change is hardly unique. But in programs like these, it’s often the adults in the room who are calling the shots: setting the vision, identifying issues to work on, and laying out a roadmap for getting there. By contrast, we’re putting teen leaders in the driver’s seat. We’re asking them what changes they want to see in their communities, and then sharing tools and making connections that will support them in organizing and advocating for change. We gathered on-going feedback from the fellows so we could iterate on the curriculum and structure the sessions in ways that would be most engaging, informative, and relevant. 

At the start of the year, SDX fellows identify a key social justice issue to address. They spend the year learning the ins and outs of their chosen issue, deepening their understanding of social change work, and developing a plan to disrupt injustice on the ground. They discussed topics like identity, storytelling and power, power mapping, and also the importance of cultivating joy and wellness practices. We bring them together for regular meetings with their peers and with mentors, and provide learning opportunities like trips and film screenings. To highlight some examples, we hosted a Human Library where fellows got to meet with local and national organizers, activists, advocates, and educators.  We had guest speakers such as Markus Batchelor (the youngest-ever elected member of the DC State Board of Education), Jamal Holtz (lead organizer with 51 for 51), and Ms. Judy Richardson (SNCC veteran and filmmaker).  We took a tour with a historian to explore the rich history of organizing and activism in Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights. We visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture to engage with artifacts and make historical connections with fellows’ social justice projects. In addition to learning opportunities and connections,we provide stipends and seed money to help fellows get their plans off the ground in real time.

This is an unusual approach. And it’s extremely intentional. Fellows are high school students who have enormous power to make positive change. Their ideas are fresh, urgent, and directly relevant to their lived experience. In our inaugural 2021-22 SDX cohort, we had fellows choose to focus on expanding financial literacy; encouraging schools to divest in policing and invest in mental health; curbing gun violence; expanding access to Black-centered education and teaching the truth; and combating discrimination in blood donation against the LGBTQIA+ community.

We believe in the power of bringing brilliant young people together in space and time. Fellows attend public and private high schools all across the DC area - traditional public schools and public charter schools. They want to come together and be part of making lasting change in their communities. One piece of feedback the fellows offered is that they enjoyed being able to meet with students from other schools – it offered an opportunity for community-building and a fresh perspective on their topics. By putting their heads together and having conversations in community, they can draw on each other’s lived experiences as well as their own. As schools face increasing political pressure to squelch conversations around white supremacy and other forms of injustice, spaces like SDX are crucial for keeping those conversations—and thus, the disruption of inequitable systems—going.

For the adults in the room, that means a different approach too. Instead of being the drivers, we’re the hype people. In a culture that is built on telling children and teens “no,” we want to be the adults in their lives who say “yes.” We often asked ourselves, “How can we make this happen?” This can be a tricky line to walk, providing structure and guidance without taking away leadership and agency. We ask lots of questions: What do you want to do? What do you need to get it done? What do you want to know? Where do you want your work to go? What are your freedom dreams? What could be possible? And then we let the teens themselves provide the answers.

Opportunities like this all across the country are crucial. They need to feel loved, supported, challenged, and equipped to meet the asks of the world in which we’re living, and to dream up ways of combating inequity and injustice well into the future. That means rethinking how we prepare them for social justice leadership, through models like SDX. If we invest in this work now, we can change the story we’re telling about ourselves and our communities—not just for us, but for future generations.