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Youth Action Coalition (YAC) began in 1988 as Hampshire Youth 2000 Coalition, a prevention-based youth leadership organization. The early years saw the creation of intergenerational projects, substance abuse prevention programs, a youth-run newspaper and community service learning projects.
In the late-1990s, under the leadership of our new Executive Director, we shifted our strategy to a more proactive approach using the arts to empower youth to speak out and take action on important issues. In this context we developed the ARTS-FOR-CHANGE project (AfC), which incorporates GirlsEyeView (1997), Get Up Get Down (2000) and Video Vanguards (2003) and E'town Rising: Voices of Youth (2010).
Today AfC programs are offered to middle and high school-aged youth in Amherst, Easthampton, Ware and the surrounding towns. We work with youth from a wide array of social circumstances, and reach out particularly to youth who are marginalized due to their experiences with race, class, gender and sexual orientation oppression, as well as allies who face other forms of marginalization and actively want to work with a diverse group of youth for a common cause.
Our work is powerful and effective in part due to our small group sizes (8-15), and each year an average of 75 young people enroll in our programs. Yet the effects are far-reaching—with exhibitions, screenings, festivals, and other actions, our youth participants are reaching hundreds of citizens annually—putting their voices and visions out to the community, and building a youth movement for social change through the arts.
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