$30,000 / 2014
Milwaukee, WI
Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Executive Director
Website: www.vdlf.org
This $30,000 renewal grant will enable Voces de la Frontera’s Youth Empowered in the Struggle (YES) to continue to organize as an inter-ethnic youth organizing effort to Increase black-brown unity, advance racial justice, increase immigrant-rights and supports for undocumented students, to fight for implementation of the YES authored Student Bill of Rights at the school, district and community levels and to train and educate YES leaders on social justice issues across the state. Last year, YES created a new YES Education Organizer position tasked specifically with developing student-teacher relations in the schools where chapters already existed, and working with the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association to establish new chapters in Milwaukee Public Schools. YES continues to train and organize high school youth toward education equity through the passage of the YES Student Bill of Rights, on solutions to address bilingual education needs and will implement a plan to restore in-state tuition in Wisconsin. The YES program will also continue to leverage its good relationships with civil-rights groups, faith-based coalitions, teacher organizations and national partners such as the United We Dream network and the NAACP, to build even stronger multi-racial social justice organizing campaigns for youth. YES has also began to develop a relationship with the national Alliance for Educational Justice (AEJ) sending members to the alliance’s national convening.