Project VOYCE

Imagine if adults trusted youth as the experts of their own experiences and sought to partner with them to develop innovative solutions to social issues. Project VOYCE (Voices of Youth Creating Equity) is a grassroots, youth advocacy organization located in Denver, Colorado that trains, employs, and organizes underrepresented youth to address root causes of inequity. Project VOYCE (PV) envisions a world with representative leadership for a more just and equitable society and serves youth of color and youth living in poverty through afterschool and summer programming. In 2006, the temporary closure of Manual High School - an underserved inner-city public school in Denver - served as a catalyst for our founding. While the closure and school redesign efforts had good intentions of involving community input, the youth recommendations were left out of the final report. Determined to ensure that students were included in conversations and decisions that affect their lives, students led the launch of PV. Currently, PV directly serves approximately 100-150 youth ages 14-25 per year, which over 15 years equals at least 1500+ young leaders who have directly benefited from our programming. We reserve a minimum 80% of our programming spots for youth of color who qualify for free and reduced lunch. We believe that no child or young person needs rescuing – they need resources, opportunities, and appropriate support. Our participants are provided a space in which to develop their own leadership styles while forming potent and lasting social bonds that sustain transformative social change projects. We provide high-quality summer, in-school, and after-school programming that incorporates a robust combination of youth employment; social-emotional development; leadership development; social justice; action research; youth-adult partnerships; and advocacy training into a whole-person, whole-community approach to movement-building for healthy communities and lifestyles.