$15,000 / 2016
East Palo Alto, CA
This renewal grant will enable Youth United in Community Action (YUCA) in providing a safe space to develop and support a core of young people to organize on affordable housing and education reform for Brown, Black and Pacific Islander communities in East Palo Alto, CA. Over the next year, YUCA will continue to develop and support a core of young people in East Palo Alto to organize on social and environmental justice issues centering on affordable housing policy and school discipline and to engage parents around student support and curriculum reform. Last year, YUCA’s goals were to win policies in East Palo Alto that support affordable housing preservation and development and to organize students to begin to dismantle the school to prison pipeline. YUCA was able to get a youth leader elected to the community advisory body of the city’s General Plan. YUCA parents and community members were also able to incorporate all of their demands around affordability, zoning and the creation of housing into the Plan. In the coming year, YUCA will monitor implementation of the General Plan and will organize East Palo Alto youth against unjust suspensions and expulsions of students of color at local Menlo Atherton high school.