EYEJ’s mission is to empower and amplify the voices of teens and pre-teens by bridging them with diverse individuals to engage in interactive discussions centered around social justice.
The EYEJ Youth Council empowers youth by creating policy, social policy, programming and awareness about a single injustice that youth face in order to create positive and fundamental change.
Formed in 2017 in partnership with A Partnership to a Safer Cleveland and thanks to the Larry Doby Youth Fund through the Cleveland Indians, they deliberated over a course of 6 months through an intense process and decided to focus on the areas of toxic stress, police-youth relationships and youth independency (life skills) as areas that would help with youth safety. They worked together to create programming recommendations and presented them to over 100 high-level Clevelanders including the Chief of Cleveland Police; Calvin Williams. They asked for $140,000 in this meeting, and thanks to the Tegna Foundation, some of it was funded.
For 2020, the EYEJ Youth Council, with the understanding of COVID-19 and recent murders and the focus on black lives matter in our society have come together with many partners help with a desire for all youth to get access to broadband internet. They feel as this will greatly empower our Cleveland youth, help them with their education, understanding and taking action with what is happening with society and support them in getting tele-health services. Approx. 40% of Cleveland youth do NOT have access to Internet and almost ¾ do not have access to devices. To read the EYEJ Youth Council’s Stance,
click here. We need your help!
The EYEJ Youth Council is looking for passionate people (can be from across the United States), age 15-25 to partner and in unison message your voice, thoughts, personal stories and ideas on how to get this implemented. The youth council meets weekly over Zoom, and work is well underway. We are looking for persons of all backgrounds, ethnicity and viewpoints. A majority of the work will begin the 3rd week of July and continue through August. To read a bit more about duties,
click here. However, this group will be focused on finding your voice, on various tactic campaigns and preparing for a large presentation towards the end of August focused on Connectivity, this issue and the Digital Divide. Please note some of the session dates are subject to change due to presentations, events etc.
Please note that this is a volunteer opportunity at this time, depending on funding support. If you are in need of financial support, please let us know – this will not prohibit you from becoming a member. Attendance, support and commitment is critical. Please complete this form. If you are unable to complete this form, please contact
hello@eyej.org or 216-200-7042.
Applications are due July 12, 2020. If your application is chosen, next step would be an interview. In this case, someone from the EYEJ team will be in touch with you soon to set this up. To help speed up the process, please complete this form
eyej.org/signup. Thank you for helping to empower our youth.