Winter Meeting Offers a Chance to Reflect and Look Ahead

Youth Forward MKE’s winter meeting on December 13 offered an opportunity for youth, partners and other participants to reflect on a year full of activities and look forward to an equally bright and busy future.

The event began with an Ambassador-led reflection that served as a recap of the year’s many youth-focused events. These highlights led seamlessly into a preview of a few exciting projects, including Milwaukee Succeeds’ ongoing strategic planning, the Autonomous Youth Council, the Youth Adult Equity Assessment 2.0 and the youth-focused work of our K12 Civic Action Team. The event wrapped with a sneak peek at some new engagement activities intended to strengthen this work by bringing more youth into the fold.

Reflecting on 2023

After years of virtual meetings and events restricted by COVID, 2023 finally offered the opportunity for in-person partnership and celebration. Throughout the year, our Youth Forward MKE Ambassadors took advantage of this, showing up in the community and showcasing the power of youth voice.

In May, three of our Ambassadors traveled to Detroit to present at the 2023 Forum National Conference. Alongside David Emmanuelle Castillo, they provided an overview of the Design Your Future Fellowship. In doing so, they became the only young people to present at the entire conference.

“I liked that a lot because it was so many different nonprofits from around America and organizations from the U.S., and they were all sharing issues that were happening in their cities,” said Amaya, one of the three Ambassadors to present.

The Ambassadors also shared their expertise at the MENTOR Greater Milwaukee Youth Voice Summit over the summer. Their session on mental health was just one of many youth-led portions, where young people discussed solutions to the issues they’re facing and ways to implement their ideas in Milwaukee.

Their community clean-up alongside ECE Ambassadors, the in-person coalition meeting in June and the Ambassador-led listening sessions were also brought up as bright spots from the year. One crowning achievement, though, was the Winter Jam. Held on December 1 at No Studios, the event offered an opportunity for youth to connect, learn about the coalition and celebrate everything we’ve accomplished this year.

As one attendee put it: “It’s everything an event is supposed to be.”

We’re looking forward to hosting and attending more events and activities in the coming year, with a focus on empowering our young people and uplifting their voice.

Strategic Planning

After looking back at the action-packed year behind us, Catina Harwell-Young, director of engagement and culture, provided a look at the ideas and themes that will drive this work into the future.

“We really want to emphasize the fact that we rely on collective impact for our work, meaning bringing as many people to the table as possible to affect change,” she said. “We really want to focus on the principle of community-led change, really ramping up our community engagement efforts so that we have the voice of community leading and driving our strategies.”

With this in mind, Milwaukee Succeeds has solidified its focus areas for the next few years, which will include policy change, data and research, and mental health. Stay tuned for more specifics on what this new Strategic Plan will entail and what this work will look like over the next couple of years!

Autonomous Youth Council

The creation of the Autonomous Youth Council, part of Design Your Future Proposal 3, represents a significant part of these upcoming plans.

“We've been talking about Autonomous Youth Council, Autonomous Youth Council for a while now. And people are like, ‘Well, so what does that mean?’” said Clintel Hasan, strategic initiatives manager. “Now we've got some concrete language that really describes the purpose.”

To put it simply, this council will recruit local youth, develop their talents and place them on local community governance structures. This includes formal structures like boards and leadership tables within our government, schools, and local nonprofits, as well as more informal decision-making bodies.

“The purpose is to ensure that youth actually have decision-making power,” shared Clintel.

Set to launch this summer, the council will be informed and shaped by community feedback, which has been gathered by our Ambassadors over the course of the year. Thanks to their input, this training will look and feel different than traditional summer programs. It will cover topics such as systems thinking, educational history and policy, philanthropy and civics, since all of these sectors impact the lives of our young people. It will also include opportunities for hands-on development, where youth join partners in data-driven decision making – like budget planning, for instance.

With this type of experience under their belts, council members will be well-equipped to serve on leadership structures across the city.

As Clintel puts it: “We want to make sure we're equipping our young people with that confidence to be fearless leaders.”

Youth Adult Equity Assessment

The Youth Adult Equity Ladder Assessment combines our commitment to youth leadership and our ongoing focus on research and data. The result is a tool that effectively evaluates the extent to which organizations, schools and community programs genuinely include and respect young people and their voices.

“We aim to foster a future where youth are not mere spectators in their own lives, but active, empowered participants in shaping their present and future,” said Kristin Kappelman, director of research.”

Milwaukee Succeeds launched the tool last year, ultimately collecting 19 responses. Feedback and suggestions from respondents have resulted in a new and improved version, which went live this fall. This new edition is simpler and easier to complete, with a scoring process that places organizations on a particular rung of the Youth Adult Equity Ladder. Eventually, there will also be an accompanying guidebook with suggestions on how different types of organizations can better elevate youth voice and empower our young people.

Any organization that works with youth is encouraged to complete the assessment and discover where they land on the ladder. Simply gather your team and get to work!

K12 Civic Action Team

The K12 Civic Action Team, led by Milwaukee Succeeds, includes community members, educators, representatives from philanthropy and more who are all invested in the success of Milwaukee’s K12 education space. This summer, their attention turned toward trauma – particularly the lack of consistent communications to our students following traumatic events in and around Milwaukee’s schools.

After learning that nothing existed in the MPS policies regarding these pivotal communications, the K12 Civic Action Team drafted and submitted a policy proposal to the MPS School Board. This proposal was then referred to the administration for further deliberation.  If adopted, these guidelines will help MPS respond to internal and external events with the developmentally appropriate communications that their students need.

As partner Sharlen Moore put it in the Milwaukee Succeeds Annual Report: “When we see a policy that is not in place that directly impacts the mental health of our students, it is the duty of our educational leaders to not only listen to the changes that need to be made, but to act to change things.”

As they wait for this proposal to progress, the team will be focusing on families and community members, with the goal of building more interest and investment in K12 Education. According to Maria Hamidu, high school success project manager, this will include a town hall meeting in 2024 to discuss current trends and concerning data pieces surrounding topics such as student suspensions, attendance rates and staff vacancies.

2024 Youth Engagement

Alongside these initiatives, Youth Forward MKE also aims to bring more youth into the fold, engaging them in meaningful ways and equipping them to become advocates and leaders in their communities. Youth-focused communications, along with additional meetings throughout the year, open to all youth, will serve to expand the base of young people connected to the coalition.

“The feedback that we continuously were getting from young people was that they wanted more and needed more impactful and experiential opportunities,” said Sebastián Fuentes, community engagement manager.

In 2024, we hope to provide that through year-round training or programming aligned with the Autonomous Youth Council. Additional events, like those lifted up by the Ambassadors at the start of the meeting, will provide even more opportunities for youth and partners to connect and for the coalition to grow and expand across the city.