Amount: $25,000
2015
New Orleans, LA
Since 2006, VAYLA has fostered the development and empowerment of youth through educational services and youth-led organizing, both addressing the immediate needs of young people and empowering them to work for systemic change. VAYLA’s roots are in the Vietnamese American community but the organization has increasingly welcomed at every level members of other communities, including Black and Latino, who now constitute a third of the membership. In the coming year, Hazen’s renewal grant will support VAYLA’s development of a Parent Advisory Board to monitor implementation of the Language Access Plan to which New Orleans has agreed, its effort to include language access and cultural competency as a major agenda item in every meeting with policymakers, and its work pressing the Recovery School District and Reed Renaissance High School to make good on their promises of community engagement.