$25,000 / 2016
Miami, FL
Power U was founded in Overtown, the historic home of Miami’s Black community, in 2000, as an intergenerational organization. In 2007, in response to the violent repression of a peaceful student demonstration in a predominantly Black high school in Miami’s urban core, Power U became actively involved in the fight to dismantle the school to prison pipeline and promote restorative justice practices in schools. In 2013, after a year of strategic planning and organizational development discussions, Power U determined to focus its entire attention on youth organizing. In 2015, Power U won Miami-Dade’s first restorative justice practices pilot projects. A $25,000 renewal grant will enable Power U to continue to organize to ensure appropriate support from the district for the restorative justice pilots it won and their expansion to high schools. Additionally, it will help Power U to develop a voter engagement campaign, to better integrate reproductive justice programming into its overall youth organizing work and to launch a Restorative Justice Rapid Response Team based outside the schools, enabling it to provide training for community activists in restorative justice practices.