Youth Empowerment Institute

Our Team

Valeria Mena

Cameron Daniel

SAndy Chung

Kaelyn Sarmiento

LinkedIn

Samantha Ortega

Project Partner

Everett Program (Santa Cruz, CA)

Main Tech Tools

Graphic Design, PhotoVoice, Website Development

Organization Needs

Research has shown time and time again that race and other socioeconomic factors often are at play in the existence of the achievement gap, individuals most affected being female students of color coming from low income households. We strive to empower young women by allowing them to gain confidence in tech literacy, financial literacy, professionalism, and much more.

Our Solution

YEI 2020 gives women identifying high school students of color an opportunity to develop specialized tech skills in graphic design, video editing, professional development and personal empowerment. This year's camp will be free of charge and held online via Zoom, Monday-Thursday, with each session lasting and hour and a half each. We offer this opportunity to prepare high school students, for their future in tech, higher education, or any path of your choosing.

Project OutCome

Created a 2 week online curriculum teaching CANVA, PhotoVoice, and Google Sites
Discussed social topics of Wealth Inequality, Black Lives Matter Movement, Environmental Racism, Food Insecurity, and Gentrification
Offered support in professional development: resume building and interview expectations

Project MileStones

Recruiting 10 young high school identifying girls to join our YEI workshops. (One participant from Ohio with 3 hours time difference, other participants recruited all across California)
All these girls made a website at the end of their 2 weeks with YEI. Their website included 3 tabs (About Me, My Projects, Social Issues).

Main Lesson Learned

Tech can be challenge to learn (especially through an online platform), we all learned patience when it comes to teaching tech through ZOOM. YEI offered additional support to our participants outside off our workshops.

YEI learned to empathize with each other and our participants, although we can be from different zip codes, we still share the same feelings and similar experiences.

YEI 2020 Projects by Participants

Canva infographics on social issues

This shows some of the work our participants did with learning how to use Canva for graphic design. Each participant made an infographic or poster regarding a social issue they were passionate about!

Photo-Voice Project

YEI girls used a more personal perspective to create this photo-voice project on social issues around their community. They speak from their own perspective and share their struggles, hoping some audience could relate to the problems they are facing as well in other communities.

Websites

After completing the projects of graphic design on CANVA and Photo-Voice, our curriculum lead the girls to design a website. The websites include 3 tabs: About Me, My Projects, and Social Issue. Due to their privacy and confidential information, we will share the screenshots of these websites instead of attaching links . Every participant had a different theme to their website and YEI selected a few to share how each tab would look like.

Home Page

About Me Page

My Projects Page

Social Issue Page

Page updated

Report abuse