Train the Trainer

2024 Youth Advocacy Training

In 2022 Equity Advocates launched a Youth Food Justice Organizers initiative to increase the capacity of youth food justice leaders to engage in youth-led advocacy and build collective power. With support from Levitt Foundation, we've partnered with East New York Farms, Green Guerillas, Riseboro, Youth Food Justice Network (YFJN) , Teens For Food Justice (TFFJ), and The Campaign Against Hunger (TCAH) to recruit a cohort of young New Yorkers, aged 14 to 22, who deepened their food policy knowledge and advocacy skills to advance food justice in communities across NYC. 

In April 2024, Equity Advocates took the next step to scale our impact through a train-the-trainer model. We led a 2-day workshop series with 18 youth food justice leaders and hosted 3 policy workshops on:

  1. Government 101

  2. Bills Assessment & Crafting a Policy Ask

  3. How to Write & Provide a Public Testimony

 

This year, we had one of our 2023 Train the Trainer participants , Jabari Pothemont, one of Green Guerillas Youth Empowerment Pipeline interns, lead the Public Testimony workshop. The goal of our Train the Trainer advocacy training is to provide youth leaders with the advocacy knowledge, practical tools and materials as well as confidence to teach back to their fellow peers. With this  experience  youth leaders have an opportunity to meet like minded food justice advocates from across NYC, the confidence to pursue careers in the political field.

Special thanks to the Levitt Foundation for their continuous support for EA’s youth organizing initiative. We are proud to announce we've received another grant to continue this work and expand our reach to educate more youth across NYC!