We can’t achieve racial justice in America until we build friendships, understanding, and empathy across racial lines.
Our Youth Leadership Program is where we begin.
Our mission is to advance the national dialogue on race, alleviate educational and residential segregation, and inspire individuals to take actions that further racial healing and social justice.
Jimiri’s Youth Leadership Program is a collaborative effort that brings together young people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds to build friendships, understanding, and empathy across racial lines.
Working with students, parents, and teachers, we form small, racially diverse groups of students based on common interests such as art, dance, digital photography, and theater.
Trained high school and college students facilitate weekly groups that engage in friendship building, community service, and discussions of race and racism. Once formed, groups are encouraged to meet through middle school, high school, and beyond.
“Like life, racial understanding is not something that we find but something that we must create. And so the ability of [Black Americans] and whites to work together, to understand each other, will not be found readymade; it must be created by the fact of contact.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Where Do We Go From Here
(Beacon Press 1968), at p. 28.
