Co-Chairs: Haley Kirse (Green Street Church), Janet Owen (UU Fellowship of W-S)

Interfaith Youth Organizing Corps was born in 2010. They are organizing to reduce bullying and discrimination in the public schools in WSFC.

Successes of Safe Schools Action Team

At CHANGE’s April 2010 Delegates Assembly, the youth addressed candidates for the School Board for two commitments:  (1) To dedicate a week on the school calendar to anti-bullying and anti-discrimination and (2) to develop a comprehensive district-wide reform that would better enable the youth and rest of the community to live up to the state law.  All candidates for the school board that attended the April 2010 Delegates Assembly committed and they re-affirmed their commitments at our October 2010 Delegates Assembly.  In partnership with Authoring Action, our youth gathered for two interfaith youth organizing trainings that focused on relationship building and skit-writing development.  The youth asked for CHANGE to develop an action team that would take on initiatives that the youth could not do for themselves.  The Health & Wellness Team was disintegrated and a new action team–the Safe Schools action team–was developed and remains to be co-chaired by an adult and a youth leader.  As a result of the interfaith youth organizing and the hard work of the Safe Schools Team, the school system has responded to the commitments by creating a WSFCS bully prevention team that has agreed to dedicate the month of October to anti-bullying and anti-discrimination.  In addition, they have agreed to work with our Safe Schools Team on identifying youth at six different schools (two elementary, two middle, and two high schools) where the youth will hold either lunch-time or after schools assemblies to generate conversations on bullying and discrimination and have youth commit to attending a youth-led town hall meeting in August.  The goals of the town hall meeting would be to identifying a couple of student-led programs for the month of October and developing means and mechanisms for youth to institutionally help develop comprehensive reform.

To learn more or get involved contact: associateorganizer@changeiaf.org