Eva Reynoso is a junior at Ronald Reagan High School. Like most youth her age, Reynoso has an after-school job, although hers is a little different than most. Reynoso, along with several of her peers, works at Arts @ Large helping to design its Mobile Media Lab.
Her employment came about through the Milwaukee Succeeds’ Autonomous Youth Council, which aims to build youth-adult equity by providing youth with the tools and opportunities to make their voices heard. Through placement at partner organizations, council members will be making decisions and influencing projects.
“I really resonated with the goal of trying to empower youth,” Reynoso said. “Being a part of the AYC, I was able to have adult conversations with my peers as well as grownups. I was able to communicate and let my voice be heard and hear other people’s voices, which I feel like is not an opportunity a lot of youth get.”
The AYC began last summer with 26 young people ranging in age from 14 to 23. The initial four-week Summer Academy included lessons and field trips with facilitators on Milwaukee’s culture, education history and youth-adult equity.
For 14 years, Milwaukee Succeeds has been at the heart of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s strategic impact in education. This initiative has honed its approach through the years and now focuses on early childhood education and high school success, with the AYC being part of the latter. Milwaukee Succeeds’ work in systems change, advocacy and more has been supported by generous Foundation donors, philanthropic partners and Board-directed resources.
Donors' longtime interest in youth and education is evident in their commitment to Milwaukee Succeeds. The initiative has received over $28 million in donor support and Board-directed funds since its inception.
Following young people’s voice
The Foundation’s commitment – and by extension that of Milwaukee Succeeds – to convene and follow community voice is evident in the creation of the AYC.
In the summer of 2021, Milwaukee Succeeds hosted the Design Your Future fellowship, a six-week online course for youth ages 15 to 24. Their challenge was to design a proposal to improve the high school experience for Black male youth.
For the past couple years, Milwaukee Succeeds implemented mental health supports within and outside of schools in response to two of the proposals. The third proposal focused on authentic engaged leadership.
“Young people were basically saying ‘There’s a lot of decisions that get made for us without us, and we want a seat at the table,’ and that’s where this Autonomous Youth Council came from,” Sebastián Fuentes, community engagement manager for Milwaukee Succeeds, said. “It’s a direct response to what young people expressed, that they wanted and needed back in 2021.”
Fuentes and Maria Hamidu, high school success project manager for Milwaukee Succeeds, helped bring the AYC to fruition.
Letting the youth lead
Over the summer, the AYC had a 100 percent retention rate and a 92 percent attendance rate. Fuentes credited the council’s intentional programming, responsiveness and respect for young people’s autonomy for the program’s success.
The youth interacted with different facilitators throughout the summer including Angela Harris and David Emmanuelle Castillo.
“They got a lot out of those interactions,” Hamidu said, “in terms of really authentic relationship-building and interactions with adults who say what it is, express when they’re wrong and listen and take in what the youth are saying.”
Harris is an educator and founder of the Black Educators Collective. As a facilitator, Harris focused on the history of education in Milwaukee and youth-adult equity.
During her second week, Harris incorporated the youth’s feedback and organized walking field trips to make the days more active.
“We often say that some topics are too deep for our students to talk about like implicit bias, white supremacy and culture, those kinds of things,” she said. “They proved hands down that they can have these conversations, they can comprehend these things, and they can take something away and apply it in other parts of their life.”
Castillo, founder of Equitable Systems Consultants who also works for We Will All Rise, Carthage College and more, focused on coaching and the historical educational system. He aimed to give youth the tools to rework the educational system framework to better benefit them.
“When you create space for young people to feel safe, to feel brave, they’re going to show up, and what they taught me is that they’re going to show up across intergenerational lines,” Castillo said. “If you create a space where everyone can be a student and learner at the same time, you’re going to see that in any space.”
Building youth-adult equity
Now, council members have an opportunity to put their lessons into action. This spring, eight partner organizations welcomed youth into their spaces to help shape projects and make decisions.
The organizations received training to help them put youth-adult equity into practice.
Data You Can Use made space for several youth on its board of directors. Dr. Victor Amaya, executive director, said he wanted youth to have an experience he didn’t get until later in life.
“I think I see this more as an opportunity for us to look at our blind spots and see what we are not doing,” Amaya said. “I think that's the little flip that I have in my mind. That it's not us providing them with opportunity. We’re actually the lucky ones to have the opportunity to have that perspective.”
Sam Kacala, education manager for Arts @ Large, realized there’s a lot of traditional infrastructure that doesn’t always consider youth voice. He’s helping the nonprofit consider what it would look like to have youth on its board, among other efforts.
For now, youth are helping design the programming of the Mobile Media Lab, which will focus on entering a new digital age. Artists will take the van to schools, after-school programs and community centers that aren’t part of Arts @ Large’s artist residency program. The youth will be able to make changes to the van and voice their opinion in a way other places may not condone, he said.
“That’s another reason I like this opportunity,” Kacala said. “It’s kind of unique in that sense, almost unfortunately so, but it’s a start, and I think that’s really cool.”
Erik Nelson, a third-year student at Marquette University and AYC member, has some advice for other organizations looking to build youth-adult equity.
“Stop making assumptions toward who young people are,” he said. “I feel like a lot of people view young people as if they’re not qualified to have an opinion when in all reality everybody has their own experience, and they can’t make an assumption toward how valid someone’s opinion is based on their age.”