Andre Simms Email & Phone Number

Andre Simms has over a decade of experience in youth organizing and program development, specializing in amplifying the voices of young people directly impacted by the criminal legal system. His work includes leadership development, mentorship and facilitating intergenerational training for authentic youth engagement. He has worked at the grassroots,state and national level to engage and support directly impacted young people in using narrative strategy to build campaigns and combat systems of oppression while working to end youth incarceration. He is the former Lead Youth organizer for The Youth Arts and Self Empowerment Project, a youth-led movement to end the practice of trying and incarcerating young people as adults and create a world without youth incarceration and is a founder of DayOneNotDayTwo, a social justice organization providing counter programming to combat harmful narratives that influence policy and practices impacting youth in Pennsylvania and beyond. As lead Youth Organizer he oversaw the development of the nations first youth participatory defense hub: mentored and supervised a team of directly impacted youth organizers and fellows and developed and facilitated innovative programming for youth in philadelphia schools, jails and detention centers. As a founding Director of DayOneNotDayTwo Andre was directly responsible for developing and facilitating Youth Led trainings for Philadelphia’s Public Defender Office, organizing the Biden-Harris White House Interagency Youth Policy Summit and spearheading the Delaware County Youth Diversion Planning committee where he facilitated community centered discussions between youth, families and policy makers to develop recommendations for county investments in community centered alternatives to incarceration.Andre’s leadership is grounded in his lived experience, having served 8 years in adult prison facilities at the age of 17. During his incarceration Andre worked with multiple organizations led by incarcerated individuals including the Lifer’s Public Safety Initiative where he was responsible for developing political education programming for incarcerated young people. Since his release Andre has dedicated his life to the fight to end youth incarceration.

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  Villanova University

  Sociology