Programs

As the entry point to FCYO’s GenPower Labs, the Organizing to Win Lab is a one-year grantmaking initiative that supports a broad range of youth organizing groups addressing the most pressing issues of the moment. This year’s Organizing to Win Lab is centered around transforming civic engagement practices for sustainable, long-term impact. Over the next year, 15 organizations will come together in a shared learning and practice community focused on harnessing the organizing opportunities afforded by an election year to advance a long-term strategic orientation.

YO-CARE 2 is working to strengthen the relationships between emergent and legacy climate and environmental justice groups, while supporting their daily work through the application of FCYO’s Power to Win Framework. Over the next two years, the cohort will undergo a capacity building program to expand their reach and influence, carry out short-term power-building experiments, and co-facilitate educational webinars with FCYO program staff to share their learnings with other youth organizers in the climate and environmental justice sector.

Praxis for Power supports a cohort of eight organizations with a high level of alignment with FCYO’s Power to Win Framework. Participatnts are working to advance their capacities for building transformative power while simultaneously playing a leadership role in organizing the youth organizing field toward greater alignment, strategic capacity, and power-building.

The youth organizing field has come a long way, yet meeting this moment will require us to build a new level of power. It will require us to face and transcend our current limitations with honesty and vulnerability. It will require us to Level Up.

FCYO's Youth Speakers Bureau is an assembly of five passionate and diverse youth organizers who are looking to build out their communications skills while serving as an advocate for the field of youth organizing. FCYO’s Youth Speakers Bureau is designed to support participants through their professional development as organizers. Foundational organizing topics center on thought leadership and communication - practices that are critical to community-based youth organizing.

At FCYO, we have identified a need for opportunities for newly mobilized young leaders to come into closer connection with one another and the youth organizing field as a whole, and to develop their capacity for strategic thinking while building in collective ways. And we are so excited by the possibilities of expanding our community in this way, which is why we are launching the Take Action for Power Fellowship.

Through the Youth Organizing for Climate Action and Racial Equity (YO-CARE) Capacity-Building Fund, FCYO will directly provide grantmaking and capacity building resources to young people of color and young people from other frontline communities who are collectively organizing to address the climate crisis. As part of a year-long learning community, we are looking to support youth organizers from both racial justice and climate justice organizations to deepen their analyses of the root causes of climate injustice and racial inequality, develop and sharpen their organizing capacities, and build and strengthen relationships.

The Organizing to Win Lab is a one-year grantmaking initiative and the entry point into FCYO’s GenPower Labs. It will support a broad range of youth organizing groups addressing the most pressing issues of the moment. Groups will be introduced to FCYO's Power to Win Framework, strategic political education, organizational assessment tools and a peer learning community rooted in vulnerability and transparency toward the building of meaningful power. It is intended for groups who are evaluating their strategic approach to strengthen their organizing methodologies.

The GenPower Labs is FCYO’s response to the charges we face at this moment. As the core of our new program, the GenPower Labs is a three tiered strategic grantmaking and capacity building initiative designed to build a more powerful, strategic, and aligned youth organizing field with the capacities to address the challenges of this moment.

FCYO is proud to announce our 2020 Moment to Movement Fund grant partners. The Moment to Movement Fund is providing one-year grants to youth organizing groups responding to the current moment in ways that build power for low-income young people, young people of color, and gender oppressed young people to advance a more just and equitable society. In 2020 we are focused on two critical issues: climate change and voter engagement. Now more than ever, we believe the leadership of young people who have been most impacted by injustice is critical to creating a more just world.