Training Dallas’s Youth to Make Change in their Communities

“Youth inherit a world with a lot of policies that affect them. They don’t necessarily have the tools to make those changes. So what we want to do is equip students with tools to analyze their world and advocate for the change they want to see.” –Anthony Galvan

Since 2014, the Institute for Urban Policy Research (IUPR) at the University of Texas at Dallas has been teaching youth to leverage data to support advocacy and action on complex social justice issues. Through the Young Leaders, Strong City program, IUPR hosted interactive sessions that brought local experts and youth together to learn about different topics with a racial equity lens and the ways data can be used to support change-making efforts. Youth participants often came to the events many years in a row. Program alumni have returned to lead sessions on the issues they care about and share how they have implemented these new skills to change their communities. For example, one alumna, with her newly acquired skills and her personal passion, lobbied her school to host a racial justice summit on immigration. Another group of alumni created an exhibit with photo essays highlighting the micro-aggressions that occur regularly at their own school to inform students, staff, and faculty of their behavior's unintended impact.

IUPR has a new focus for its work with young people in 2019. After five successful years of delivering summits to more than 1,200 of Dallas’s youth, the Young Leaders, Strong Cities program has now morphed into a stand-alone organization, the Imagining Freedom Institute, run by the IUPR team that developed the program. The IUPR team is pivoting their work with youth under a new initiative, Dallas Urban Futures, focused on undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Through Dallas Urban Futures and the student organizing committee, IUPR hosted their first summit for college students in the style of the Young Leaders, Strong Cities program in May 2019. This summit was predominantly led and organized by a small group of undergraduate students and focused on racial justice through art, justice reform, and urban design. Many undergraduate students got to practice their skills during the summit, as well as in the development and promotion of the summit. Students contributed as volunteers, graphic design artists, and social media promoters. IUPR and the student organization committee will plan similar summits in the future and are exploring other ways they can bring racial equity and data training into both undergraduate and graduate classrooms. Through their work with students at the university, IUPR hopes to foster an interest in community change work, an understanding of the power of data, and the analytical and interpersonal skills needed to advocate for change.