Songwriting & social justice: Youth voices for change

This blog is part of a series covering the work of New York Life Foundation Aim High grantees. Awardees receive support for their outstanding out-of-school time programs serving underserved middle school youth. The Aim High grant request for proposals is open now through February 1, 2024 — read the RFP and start your proposal on SurveyMonkey Apply, and join us for our webinar on January 11, 2024. To see more spotlights on Aim High grantees, check out the Afterschool Awards page. 

With the support of the afterschool program We Amplify Voices, Ohio students are addressing social justice issues and making their voices heard. In today’s blog, Executive Director Nicholas D'Andrea discusses the role the New York Life Foundation’s Aim High grant has played in expanding their impact and helping the program empower young artists to be catalysts for change. We Amplify Voices was one of 40 recipients of the Aim High grants awarded by the New York Life Foundation in 2022.

What is We Amplify Voices?

As a platform for self-empowerment through artistic expression, We Amplify Voices gives youth a voice, not by speaking for them but rather by giving them the tools, confidence, and technical knowledge to amplify their expressive capabilities. Using social and emotional learning (SEL) as a foundation, our program offers trauma-informed workshops throughout the year and brings participants together in a group setting to write and produce their own, radio-ready songs and music videos.

How has the Aim High grant helped support your youth program, We, The Change?

Last year school year, we initiated four new afterschool programs with support from the Aim High grant. During the course of the year, we were also able to enhance our curriculum to complement a social justice course being offered by one of our middle school partners. We applied our creative expression and social and emotional learning curriculum to the goal of empowering students and activating them as change agents in their local community. Our enhanced We, The Change curriculum was used in our summer programming. We’re hoping to implement We, The Change again this year. We also aspire for the district to embrace this model across all schools and collaborate with us.

How does the program use songwriting and creative expression to encourage and empower students to use their voice to address social justice issues?

We give our students projects to express themselves as they progress through the year. The song and final music video they create carries the message of the conversations they are having in the classroom around social justice and change and allows them to see tangible results. In partnership with our local NPR station, students are able to amplify their song during a 5-minute spotlight and explain on air the meaning behind their song. Student-produced songs “Crown” and “Tell Me” can be found on our YouTube channel.

What role do youth play in molding their program experience?

Youth voice is central to our program. We take every opportunity to have youth be the leaders; they set the community guidelines and are responsible for enforcing them so that they feel a sense of ownership. Every year, our programming concludes with a community impact project where the students are able to designate a campaign for the year. The artwork they create in the program carries a message in itself, but the community impact project is a hands-on campaign that they’ll carry out in their school community. A few examples have been around anti-vaping and anti-bullying. We aim to place students in leadership roles and provide opportunities for them to experience and understand the essence of leadership firsthand.

How are students able to build and sharpen their SEL competencies in the program?

Our focus areas are self-awareness, self-esteem, confidence, character-building, and collaboration. While writing a song or directing a music video, students are inherently engaging in that collaborative and creative process. There are many moments in the process where students must reflect on how they feel, how the message of the project resonates with them, and how their views differ. In this process, there's a lot of compromising and a constant need to work together. We highlight the importance of active listening, idea-sharing, and openness to diverse perspectives, culminating in a project that instills a sense of pride among the students.

What reflections do you have on working with middle school youth today?

We’ve been serving middle school youth for a while, but the far-reaching impact of the pandemic was a big lesson for us. Middle schoolers are in the developmental stage where peer approval is important. There has been a lot of focus on how to make authentic engagement happen on their level since much of the muscle memory of socialization and connecting was lost.

Identifying with each other and relating to each other in a safe space like our program has lasting effects on the connections they make, inside and outside of the program as well.

How is We Amplify Voices’ empowering the next generation of youth advocates?

Our program is a place for students to show up as their authentic selves, be seen, and be heard outside of the context of the school day or social media. We want our students to feel empowered as leaders in their community and that they have the ability and responsibility to be forces for good. We want them to be able to look critically at the world around them and create a vision for how their community can be better, with the confidence to carry that out.

What piece of advice do you have for other afterschool programs?

Keep fighting the good fight. Celebrate the small victories and moments of breakthrough.