The gentrification of the Mission District brought a "gang list" that affected young people in a 60-block radius, limiting their freedom of movement and association. Vicente Garcia used his 2007 Young People For fellowship to organize the community to stop the gang list.
Young People For Team
Joy Lawson is the Director of YP4. Joy began her career as a student organizer at the University of Kansas. She worked with local organizations to ensure Kansas youth received medically accurate sex education by campaigning local and state school boards. For her work on Sex Education Joy was awarded the Generation-to-Generation Chapter Leadership Award and soon after joined the staff at Choice USA as a National Field Associate and later as the Midwestern States Field Coordinator. At Choice USA she worked to build a stronger progressive movement by training and developing a diverse base of young reproductive justice leaders.
Joy joined the People For staff in February 2010 as YP4's Advanced Leadership and Alumni Program Manager. Over the past two years Joy has worked to ensure that the relationships and work completed during the YP4 Fellowship are sustained and supported over the long-term. Under her leadership over 60% of the alumni of Young People For have reengaged with the program and the YP4 Alumni Network has become a community of young progressives committed to cultivating and supporting YP4 programs and fellows through mentorship, networking, advanced leadership trainings and much more.
Joy is a Midwest Academy graduate and a 2006 Grassroots Organizing Weekend trainer. She comes to YP4 with training in grassroots organizing, leadership development, and capacity building. Committed to mentorship, Joy currently acts as a coach for the New Leaders Fellowship housed in the Center for Progressive Leadership.
Fellowship Department
Before becoming Fellowship Program Manager for YP4, Zach was a 2007 YP4 Fellow and former Steering Committee member. As an active student organizer at Florida State University, he served as the director of the Pride Student Union, where he helped to establish the LGBTQ Student Resource Center. In this capacity, he also co-founded and served as chief organizer for the Coalition for an Equitable Community, an alliance of students and organizations dedicated to expanding the university's nondiscrimination policy. During this time, Zach also worked for Refuge House, a local domestic violence and rape crisis center, where he helped develop a social justice program for college-aged participants. In his spare time, Zach volunteers with HIPS, an amazing local organization that uses a harm reduction model in their work with sex workers and injection drug users in Washington, DC. He lives in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood with his temperamental cat Erzulie.
William is the Fellowship Coordinator at YP4. As a campus leader at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, he held many leadership positions including vice president of the Black Student Union and Resident Assistant. William was elected the first openly gay and second person of color as the Vice President of the student body. He also served as the National Queer Student Coalition Chair for the United States Student Association. Upon graduation, William received a fellowship with the Center for Community Change where he worked to register voters in Northern Virginia. He has also interned with Advocates for Youth working on HIV/AIDS/STIs in the Black Male Community. While being at YP4 he has energetically helped mentor 2 fellowship classes and played a vital role in planning and executing our Regional Trainings and National Summits.
Sakeena Kenton is the Fellowship Associate at Young People For. She is a graduate of The Florida State University with a Bachelor's degree Sociology and African American Studies. Sakeena is an alumni of the Center for Progressive Leadership, Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and a member of Omicron Delta Kappa National Leadership Honorary. She is also an alum of the United State Student Association, where she served for 2 years on the National Board of Directors for the United States Student Association, as well as a Grassroots Organizing Weekend Trainer, and campus organizer for the 2008 election cycle. Sakeena is an alum of YP4's 2009 class and work vigorously to support each new class of fellows every year.
Advanced Leadership & Alumni Department
Paloma Ibañez is the Advanced Leadership & Alumni Program Manager at YP4. She is a 2007 YP4 Fellow and a graduate of Northern Arizona University (NAU) with a degree in Environmental Studies. Her academic focus in sustainability, community, and biocultural diversity, led to her involvement in the student environmental caucus where she collaborated with students, faculty and staff to foster a “green” community at NAU. Projects she worked on included helping establish a sustainable cafe that uses local products in campus dining and creating a short film highlighting green initiatives to incoming students. She was president of her community service sorority which emphasizes mentorship of youth, women and under-represented communities. Paloma is a recent alumni of the Center for Progressive Leadership’s New Leaders Fellowship Program where is she is excited to learn new tools to help grow the progressive movement.
Summer Interns
Casey Clowes is a rising junior at Arizona State University majoring in Public Service and Public Policy and Women and Gender Studies. She is a 2011 YP4 Fellow and her blueprint project aims to combat on-campus homophobia through peer education. Casey has partnered with Fraternity and Sorority Life to create an ally-training program designed for and taught by Greek students which will be fully implemented in Fall 2012. She is looking forward to gaining new skills with YP4 to take into the upcoming school year where she will take on the position of University Affairs Director with undergraduate student government.
We're hiring! If you are interested in helping us protect and promote our nation’s core values by identifying, engaging and empowering young leaders and activists and equipping them to work toward positive social change in their communities and across the nation, please consider joining us.