On May 4, high school students gathered for the Youth Organizing Institute Spring Training. Youth from Orange, Wake, and Durham Counties gathered at the Street Scene Teen Center in Chapel Hill. Popular education trainings were requested by the youth for this year’s spring training. Additionally, leaders in NC HEAT helped to facilitate the trainings, along with adult allies from the UNC Center for Civil Rights and the Counter Cartographies Collective.
The curriculum included a school to prison pipeline 101 workshop, followed by a facilitation training so that the attendees could bring the training back to their schools and communities. After lunch we had data, mapping, and cartography exercises to analyze data, then transform it into accessible and useful forms. This Spring’s Institute laid the groundwork for the 4th annual Summer Institute, which will take place in July.