Too often, young people are encouraged to “use their voice” without being taught how power actually works. This workshop moves beyond awareness, charity, and one-time service projects to explore how youth voice becomes collective power when grounded in lived experience, analysis, and strategy.
Through storytelling, facilitated dialogue, and hands-on activities, students will engage core Teen Empowerment practices, including:
- Root-cause thinking: understanding why community conditions exist, not just how to respond to them
- Power awareness: identifying who makes decisions and how influence is built
- Collective action: shifting from individual concern to shared responsibility and long-term change
This session challenges participants to rethink common approaches to activism and community service, offering a framework for long-term engagement rooted in accountability, vision, and shared leadership. Students will leave with practical tools, a deeper understanding of how change happens, and a clearer sense of how their voice can contribute to collective action on their campus and beyond
Presenter: Teen Empowerment
The Center for Teen Empowerment, Inc. (TE) empowers youth and adults as agents of positive individual, institutional, and social change. Each year, TE youth conduct over 150 initiatives involving some 6,000 youth and adults in Rochester, NY and in the Boston, MA area. Since 1992, Teen Empowerment has employed and trained thousands of youth, worked to promote tolerance and understanding in communities and schools, and helped bring youth voice into the public policy debate. TE’s work has touched the lives of more than 40,000 youth and adults.