Empowering a younger generation

Gabrielle Jackson remembers feeling empowered when speaking about her own lived experiences.

In a small legislative briefing room last year, Jackson spoke about how school suspensions had negatively impacted her life. Her comments were in support of the Judith S. Kaye Solutions Not Suspensions bill, a proposal that would reform New York’s school discipline policies, replacing suspensions with restorative, age-appropriate, equitable measures. 

Growing up in Geneva, Jackson was a Black girl in a predominantly white school district and felt disconnected from a community like her.

“I experienced a lot of suspensions for a lot of minor things, like insubordination, lack of participation, or maybe even just talking too much. It was always some form of exclusionary discipline and it had a huge impact on my association with school,” says Jackson, who now is a senior at Rochester’s School of the Arts and a youth organizer with the Center for Teen Empowerment. “Even now, I have a hard time socializing because I was hindered from learning those crucial social qualities at a young, formative age.”

At the briefing, she notes, “I felt very important and that it was important to be a witness in testifying to something so emotional and dear to me.”

Joining Teen Empowerment after her family moved to Rochester connected her with a supportive community. Through its approach that rates personal development as high a priority as advocacy work, Jackson says she was able to thrive.

“Before Teen Empowerment, I was someone who didn’t like attention. The spotlight really scared me a lot of the time. So, I would always be laid back and in my own world,” recalls Jackson, who now comes across as a serious and thoughtful speaker. “Then, when I started writing pieces that really resonated with me and shared them with people in the community, even people I didn’t know, it made me feel powerful. It made me feel connected.”

This sentiment is echoed by many other youth organizers at Teen Empowerment’s three locations in the west, east, and north sides of the city.

“At first, I was scared. Like, my leg wouldn’t stop shaking,” Jah’corey Chapman, a senior at Wilson High School, remembers of his first time public speaking. “But the more and more I practiced, learning how to put my words together, get up on that stage and talk, the more I was able to project my voice and actually speak, not just hang around and not do anything.”

“I didn’t ever envision myself as a leader before,” says Jeylani Muktar, a senior from Edison Career and Technology High School. “I used to be so shy and not outspoken, but Teen Empowerment really encouraged me to speak up and use my voice.”

Affirmative approach

The Center for Teen Empowerment began in 1992 in Boston in response to widespread violence at the time. Eleven years later, the nonprofit launched in Rochester, where its budget for program services totaled more than $560,000 in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023. It also operates in Somerville, a city northwest of Boston.

Since its launch here, Teen Empowerment has hired more than 600 youth and collaborated with many other organizations including the Center for Youth, Maplewood YMCA, Alternatives to Violence Prevention, Taproot Collective, Connected Communities, RochesterWorks, the Rochester City School District, the city of Rochester Department of Recreation and Human Services, and the Children’s Agenda.

The organization recently expanded its Rochester footprint, completing a $4.3 million expansion of its Genesee street location and launching a third program on the northside of the city, located at EnCompass Resources For Learning.

In its current iteration, about 50 young people are hired by Teen Empowerment each year. Candidates must be 14 to 19 years old, represent the demographics of their neighborhood, and have lived experiences with impact issues (such as violence, poverty, homelessness, or mental health challenges).

The hiring process begins in October, with full cohorts formed and onboarded by December and working through until August. Youth organizers work four to five days a week, for a total of 12 hours weekly during the school year (20 hours during the summer).

Youth organizers say Teen Empowerment’s approach is collaborative, self-affirming, and empowering, which, Jackson notes, is an approach teens do not normally experience. Daily group meetings are designed to develop teamwork skills that further develop into close relationships.

“Every time you’re here, you’re able to express the way you feel without being judged. And you can use your arts and talents to express the way you feel,” says Laniyah Rand, a junior at School of the Arts. “That’s not a place you can find all that often (as a teen); where you can have that safe haven and also work to make a change at the same time.”

Adds Chapman: “You build relationships with people you think you’d never be talking to. After you bond with them over things, now you can build a community.”

Chapman originally heard about the program from a friend. He appreciated the open and nonjudgemental approach so much, he applied multiple times for the youth organizer position, working to improve his interview process each time.

Another major part of Teen Empowerment’s training is simply learning how systems of education or politics actually work, reflects Rand, also a youth organizer. She is enthusiastic about engaging with others by teaching them what she’s learned and she regularly encourages her peers to get involved in youth lead action.

“That’s why I love working here, because 90 percent of the things I know now about what really goes on within our community or within our system, I would not know otherwise. Just being aware is half the battle,” she says. “And a lot of the time as youth, our voices don’t get heard. Here, it feels like an equal playing field with adults when we are working together.”

Many youth organizers also add it is significant that the position is a paid job. (They earn $15.50 an hour in the position).

“I had just turned 14 and I was looking for jobs everywhere, but no one would hire me that young. I applied for (the youth organizer job), but I didn’t really even know what the job was until I got to the interview,” recalls Mekka Shareef, a homeschooled senior student from the 19th Ward. “But once I got there, I realized that it was actually focused on things I already knew I wanted to do. I realized it could give me a voice.”

Personal impact

Shareef had already been using his voice as a young person, but for music. Typically content to listen rather than speak, recounting his love of music immediately makes him come alive.

“Music speaks to you, even if it’s just a feeling,” he says. “Like, you might not even understand the same language the rapper or singer is speaking, but you can still feel it. It’s a way you can reach and connect to different people.”

Inspired by his favorite rap artists, such as Pop Smoke, 50 Cent, Tupac Shakur, and MO3, Shareef began by remixing songs as early as elementary school. He honed his style through open mic events and freestyle cypher raps before being hired as a youth organizer.

That background made Teen Empowerment’s initial programming a fantastic fit for him. Through the organization’s emphasis on reflective writing and poetry, Shareef further developed his voice, focusing on issues he learned about during his time with the program. Now, he regularly delivers slam poetry performances and emcees for Teen Empowerment’s events.

Ni’Ziah Edmond, a senior at School of the Arts, always felt like she was artistic. But she had never focused on poetry. When one of Teen Empowerment’s first assignments was to explore identity through that art form, the typically fearless and outspoken Edmond admits she was intimated at first.

“I had never performed before, but everyone was very supportive and everyone enjoyed my writing. So, it felt like I had a voice I was using,” she says.

“At the times where I personally was at my absolute lowest, poetry and music were their most powerful,” Edmond continues. “If you’re feeling the weight of the world, when you find a song or an artist where they understand exactly and put everything you’re feeling into words, it feels like ‘Okay, other people get this too.’ It’s a healthier way to cope.”

Across the board, Teen Empowerment youth organizers all identify mental health issues as a huge challenge for young people today.

In a sobering reminder of that challenge, on the day Edmond spoke to the Beacon, she was wearing a yellow shirt as part of an effort to raise mental health awareness and to honor a SOTA classmate who took their life earlier that week.

Edmond says the outpouring of support was tremendous, but she fears that intentionality can easily slip away as time passes.

“After a tragedy happens, everyone will know and say mental health is a big challenge and needs to be recognized,” she says. “Everyone is saying ‘mental health this’ and ‘stop bullying that,’ but if everyone was focused on this before tragedy happens, it probably wouldn’t have happened.”

Joshua Sanchez is a fellow youth organizer with Edmond at the northside location. A young man proud of his uniqueness, Sanchez knows that it is harder for some of his peers to accept for themselves.

“People see a lot of the youth just as kids, when really they aren’t. They’re going through so much beyond their years,” he observes.

“Teaching them a little bit of self-love will help out,” adds Sanchez. “People expect others to just do the better things when we don’t all have the guidance. They need help and support.” 

This year’s large community initiative is an inclusive fashion show, something Sanchez says is designed to help youth embrace their identities.

“It’s a part of teaching uniqueness and authenticity. You have a right to choose what path you want, you don’t have to just go along with the program,” he says.

Community initiatives

Work responsibilities for those hired by Teen Empowerment include organizing youth-led initiatives every four to six weeks (with one large community initiative each year); participating in two statewide or regional events; bringing youth voice into community meetings, panels, or conferences; and engaging with 50 to 100 people during the initiative.

Among the organization’s most notable projects is “Clarissa Uprooted,” an intergenerational conversation partnering Teen Empowerment youth with elders who grew up in the Third Ward and Clarissa Street neighborhood.

More recently, organizers like Jackson have traveled to Albany to advocate for the Solutions Not Suspensions bill.

“There is so much learning potential that is lost from the suspension system we have,” she says.

In the Rochester City School District, data available from the state Department of Education indicates, suspension rates have been increasing. During the 2016-17 school year, 8 percent of students received some sort of suspension; in 2022-23, the number was 15 percent.

A fact sheet from the Children’s Agenda during the 2023-24 school year further paints a picture of countywide disparity. Black students, students with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged students were significantly more likely to be suspended, especially in suburban districts.

The Pittsford Central School District performed the worst in this respect, with Blacks students 7.7 times more likely to be suspended than white students, students with disabilities 5.2 times more likely to be suspended than general education students, and economically disadvantaged students 5.9 times more likely to be suspended than economically secure students.

Though the Solutions Not Suspensions bill has been stalled in the state Legislature, Jackson remains committed to supporting it. She believes that suspensions should be used as a last resort and their maximum lengths reduced, alternatively using restorative practices, limiting the number of suspensions for young students, and providing out-of-school instruction to improve educational outcomes for students like her.

In addition, Teen Empowerment youth organizers’ “Orange is the New Black” event series worked to raise awareness about gun violence in the city, another issue with which many of them are concerned.

Overall crime has been on the decline in Rochester, with the number of shooting victims 24 and younger falling close to pre-COVID pandemic levels.

While motor vehicle thefts have also fallen, from 3,943 in 2023 to 2,068 in 2024, that total is still much higher than the previous average of 655 thefts. Much of that crime has been associated with youth, with joyriders being labeled as “Kia boyz,” a moniker with which youth organizers are familiar and use themselves.

“It all starts off with a ‘cursed household.’ If your parents hadn’t been there, or if you hadn’t had a guide to tell you right from wrong, you might see stealing cars as something normal. They don’t understand the repercussions and continue doing it,” observes Muktar, who says he was almost hit by joyriders once.

“With the Kia Boyz, instead of just arresting them and then letting them right back out, you could give them an alternative,” Shareef suggests. “What they do is break down cars, so what if you find them a job where they do similar stuff, but in a positive way? Like at a mechanic shop.”

Both young men believe that organizations like Teen Empowerment need to extend their reach and share their approach with more youth. Opportunities, rather than punishment, will improve the situation.

Muktar believes that getting involved with Teen Empowerment likely changed the path his life was on. As a member of the Reconnection team, the program he is involved in focuses on the “hardest to reach” youth and on reconnecting them to community, avoiding recidivism, building skills, and finding healing.

“I went through a rough patch. It would have been easy to be on the street doing things there instead,” he reflects.

As part of the Teen Empowerment team, he is an energetic and personable worker, eager to dap up his peers and cheerfully invite newcomers to movie nights held at the Genesee street location.

“Have you ever seen ‘They Cloned Tyrone’? It’s actually about how people are kept in poverty, it’s really good,” Muktar recommends with a smile.

Views of the future

The youth organizers the Beacon spoke with universally say they will continue their advocacy work after they leave Teen Empowerment.

Some future plans are directly related to the work they have done while at Teen Empowerment. For example, Rand is planning to attend an HBCU and wants to study psychology or criminal justice in order to better understand and help fix the “school to prison pipeline.” Shareef says he will continue to create spoken-word poetry and music with themes of social justice and change.

Chapman, meanwhile, wants to study electrical engineering and open his own business. Edmond hopes to work with animals as a veterinarian. However, both say they too will carry on advocating for their community, even if it is as simple as paying attention to or participating in public meetings.

This desire to continue the work aligns with youth organizers’ views of the future. According to Teen Empowerment’s own surveys, 94 percent of youth organizers say working with the organization made them more hopeful about their community.

It is not blind optimism, however. Rather, they have a nuanced view that acknowledges hard work is needed to achieve that future. They understand there is turmoil in politics, economics, the environment, education, civil rights, public safety, and much more. Even still, most remain optimistic about what comes next.

“The future is going to be rocky. We (as a generation) are just now getting the hang of things, but I feel like we’re going to make some progress as long as people are paying attention to the things that we actually need,” Chapman says.

“We need more actual leaders and people that are invested in the community, making it better, and actually trying to change it,” Shareef believes. “I think with even more youth, we could make more change and maybe we should have a positive peer pressure (movement) to get people involved.”

Rand agrees with those points, adding that knowledge is indeed power.

“Get acquainted with your community,” she says. “And when doing that, also find the resources. Because, you are not alone, but some people will feel on their own without that support system and that knowledge.”

“I think my generation especially has adapted with a strong sense of resilience and I think that will be the leading drive and factor for us to make big changes that we have been waiting to see for so long,” says Jackson. “I think it’s all about making sure you’re staying educated and becoming self-aware and being openminded about your contribution to what is being done.

“Change starts with you and you are not alone,” she adds, echoing Rand. It’s yet another lesson learned from her time with Teen Empowerment.

This Community Chronicles article was made possible by a grant from the ESL Charitable Foundation. 

Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.

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