COHORT OF COURAGE: YOUTH ADVOCATES

About Cohort of Courage: Youth Advocates

In August 2020, SDVFP hosted a youth forum that inspired our first Cohorts for Courage: Youth Advocates program, where BIPOC youth from area high schools and universities came together to understand and implement strategies for social change. The culmination of the week-long intensive program was a public forum where participants presented on topics that they were passionate about and proposed solutions: health foods in schools, public transportation in Sioux Falls, and discrimination in public schools. Several cohort members have now come together to host a podcast IN THE KNOW. Cohort members are committed to the social change work they developed during the program and SDVFP is continuing to support and uplift their voices.

About South Dakota Voices for Peace

Founded in 2017, South Dakota Voices for Peace (SDVFP) builds power and enables healing in immigrant, refugee, and Muslim communities by amplifying their voices and working in solidarity with all who dismantle bigotry and racism. SDVFP envisions a South Dakota that is diverse, inclusive, and anti-racist. SDVFP realizes this mission through education, advocacy, legal service, civic engagement and rapid response programming and actions. We work on both ends of the social change continuum—bottom-up in building power, and top-down in lobbying against bigoted legislations and policies through our sister organization South Dakota Voices for Justice. SDVFP's flagship education, advocacy, and civic engagement program is titled Cohorts for Courage.

Action Plans

• We will start by assessing participants’ intercultural competency using the Intercultural Development Inventories©(IDI©), and provide opportunities for increasing competencies through readings, experiences and discussion.

• ​We will participate in breakout sessions that develop our social justice leadership skills and provide us with tools to take an idea and put it into action.

• We will learn about the history of systemic racism and its impacts today in SD through readings, podcasts and discussions with local advocates.

• We will provide skills in media advocacy including organizing press conferences, writing op-eds, writing press releases, and preparing for news interviews.

• We will learn the art of grassroots organizing by partnering with South Dakota authors and artists.

• We will learn from social justice leaders across the state and grow our network of intergenerational changemakers, while brainstorming ways in which we can support and address the needs of our communities.

• We will directly work with Drawn Together, a coalition led by League of Women Voters on redistricting efforts and voting rights.

• At a culminating public forum, Youth Advocates will take what they learned, and engage in discussion with the greater public to address their concerns, hopes, and lay the foundation for a sustainable future of understanding, collaboration, and coalition.

Ultimately, Cohorts of Courage: Youth Advocates is our next step to fight bigotry and racism, strategically by giving Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) youth the tools and knowledge they need to make positive change in their communities.

Eligibility

SDVFP offers this program to any youth who identifies as BIPOC* (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and who meets the age requirements, 17-24. All applicants must reside in South Dakota. For minors, a separate parental consent form must be submitted before the start of the program and will be emailed to you upon acceptance.
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* BIPOC have always understood the need for our own spaces for our own safety and healing. This program seeks to create a safe space for BIPOC to reimagine relationships amongst themselves without fear of judgement, shame, and guilt.