IHTD

Youth Civic Engagement KC

Kansas City Area School and Youth Groups are Invited to take advantage of powerful opportunity for youth develolpment and leadership

AFSC's Youth Civic Engagement work in Kansas City had a great year and we are looking for groups to collaborate with for programs for 2013-2014. We anticipate that after this year's excellent experiences we will have many more requests from groups wishing to participate next year, so contact us soon.

KC Youth Lobby in DC

Youth from the Whatsoever Community Center, KCMO made lobby visits to the offices of Congressman Cleaver and Blunt as part of the national screening and advocacy actions at the "If I Had a Trillion Dollars" Youth Film Festival. (To view a gallery of photos from the event, click here.)

Youth represent Kansas City at the “If I Had a Trillion Dollars” National Film Festival in Washington, D.C. 

KC IHTD Presentation

AFSC Peace Interns Pearl Webb and Isabella Fassi conduct an If I Had A Trillion Dollars youth film training at Paseo High School

The Intern will work with AFSC staff and volunteers to support Kansas City AFSC peace campaigns and engage youth from after-school, faith, and high school settings in creative peacemaking and social change (e.g. If I Had A Trillion Dollars youth Film Festival and the If I Could Change The World Spoken Word Project). Activities will focus on: increasing activism; promoting understanding of militarism and economic injustice; exposing ways corporations and the 1% control U.S.

Pearl Webb and Isabella Fassi, KC interns 2012

AFSC Kansas City interns Isabella Fassi, left, and Pearl Webb unfold a graphic demonstrating that 60% of discretionary federal spending goes to the Pentagon. The seated students are from Paseo Arts Academy.

Pearl Webb, Isabella Fassi, and Joshua Smith started interning with AFSC in August 2012, to lead youth civic engagement and social action projects in the Kansas City area. Along with Program Coordinator Ira Harritt, the interns teach high school-aged youth about issues in their communities, injustice in the U.S., and how they can help put an end to the injustice and promote greater peace.

Group visit to MLK memorial in DC

Visiting the Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial after learning about human rights was a highlight of the group's trip to Washington.

A group of Quaker youth in Greensboro, N.C., troubled by their state’s outright ban on same-sex marriages, approached AFSC this summer to get a better understanding of human rights.

Within the group, the general sentiment was that the U.S. Constitution is meant to name freedoms, not take them away, explains the group’s facilitator, Sheila Hoyer.

“Our youth have a strong concern for equal rights for all, especially the oppressed gay community in our state,” she says. “It's a very personal issue to this group.”