Youth Organizing

Youth leadership is a powerful force for change. Young people bring new thinking, energy, and creativity to our work—they are the future of our communities and our movement. To create healthy communities rooted in social justice requires us to provide education, technical and strategic support, and the resources necessary for young people to develop their potential as community leaders.

SWOP is an intergenerational organization that provides a meaningful space for youth to plan and initiate their own campaigns to address their specific needs and to exercise leadership. By prioritizing this space at SWOP, youth emerge as a strong voice throughout our work and we create leadership for our communities more broadly.

Our youth rights program began in the 1980’s when our membership expressed a desire to provide childcare and youth oriented activities for the young people growing up within the SWOP family. In the 1990’s, we began to develop more structure. Jovenes Unidos was our first formal project, with the goal to provide cultural education oriented toward Chicano history that was missing from the school system. From that group of young people emerged a group of high school age students who expressed an interest in direct community organizing.

Since then, SWOP’s youth have successfully changed the practice of local malls harassment of young people; limited the arming of school security guards; defeated a proposed statewide curfew and called attention to the Albuquerque police department's practice of racial profiling.  In addition, we have built a strong political education and leadership development program for young people.

2009: The COIN Program

SWOP began a structured summer internship program primarily for high school students in 1999. In 2007 we began offering year round internships to students. In 2009, SWOP was chosen to participate in a national pilot program called the Civic Opportunity Initiative Network, or COIN.

The COIN program will place 20 high school students with SWOP as interns over the course of two years. The young people undertake an intensive summer internship, and receive academic mentoring and support during the school year. A subset of these students will be chosen to continue on through college, with full scholarships through a consortium of participating institutions of higher education. During their college years they'll receive summer internships through SWOP and it's networks.

This pilot project seeks to develop a model that promotes community organizing as a form of youth service, and is designed to give community-based organizations with a proven track record working with youth an opportunity to deepen their work.

To learn more about our youth organizing program, please contact Emma Sandoval, emma@swop.net.

Here are some resources for students looking to go to college:

Test prep and financial advice, LNESC Upward Bound Scholarship list, MALDEF Scholarship list.