Success Story
ORGANIZING EFFORTS AT
THE CENTER FOR YOUNG WOMEN'S DEVELOPMENT
San Francisco, CA

By Jessica Nowlan-Green

The Center for Young Women's Development does a lot of organizing work specifically with young women involved in the juvenile justice system. Our goal is to work on strengthening the analysis of young women that are in the system so that they can become involved in organizing and educating other young women within their communities. We do this by providing young women with political education, survival tools, street and institutional workshops, and linkages to community agencies and groups that are doing similar work.

CYWD has worked with young women from POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) to organize workfare participants to gain the equal rights of employees who are not on welfare. CYWD staff have been a part of the fight against the incarceration of young people and were some of the key leaders in the Youth Walk Out in 1999 in which 5,000 young people from all over the Bay Area took over the streets of San Leandro to fight for "Education not Incarceration." And, most recently, we and 500 other young people from the Bay Area took over the San Francisco Hilton Hotel because they were a big supporter of Proposition 21, the Youth Crime Bill, that passed through a ballot initiative in March, 2000.

www.cywd.org

© 2000 by Individual Authors