California Fund for Youth Organizing

The California Fund for Youth Organizing is a collaborative, community-based grantmaking vehicle that recognizes the expertise of young practitioners in progressive social change and enables them to learn first-hand about grantmaking processes and contribute to the strategic development of the youth organizing movement. The Fund builds the capacity of young leaders to expand and direct resources into a progressive youth movement, and thereby transform philanthropy by recognizing the legitimacy and aptitude of young people in social change. Through grantmaking and movement building activities, CFYO supports youth organizing—the Central Valley, Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Bay Area—promoting civic engagement of youth in issues that impact them the most, and developing and sustaining a growing youth movement for social change.

Curricula

Building Bridges Among Communities of Colors

  1. Understand that communities of color share common struggles and interests.
  2. Explore how divide and conquer is a strategy used to keep us from realizing our true power by creating and exploiting small differences in status of different groups.  

Building Internal Solidarity: The Movement, Conflict, and You

  1. Increase the power of the Movement by building unity in our organizations through understanding conflict and our reactions to conflict.
  2. Understand that conflict is neither good nor bad – contradiction is an important transformative force that should be named, harnessed, and struggled over in order to build unity and increase understanding.