Youth
Liberation
Movement
Our Mission
Our mission is to liberate young people from generational cycles of trauma and oppression by translating our lived experiences into actionable solutions.
Our Vision
We envision a world where community, compassion, and love overtake greed, ignorance, and division to create a healthy society where everyone feels welcome, valued and safe.
Our Values
Truth
We do not give excuses, exaggerate or exclude information to benefit our version of events or try to silence others, instead we seek individual’s perspectives to understand the full picture.
Deep Humanity
We nurture trust, care and consciousness in our relationships with our self and others to allow people to show up as their full selves and still feel safe.
Communication
Our power lies in our shared foundation of knowledge and the strength of our relationships which we create by consistently having respectful, timely, and open-minded conversations.
Fierce Urgency
We use our persistence, anger, and passion to take immediate action because we do not accept suffering as normal.
Accountability
We practice bravery and self-awareness to measure, accept, and implement improvements to our actions and words so we can honor/fulfill our commitments to our peers and community.
Stability and Resilience
We are grounded and reliable, when things get hard we push through together consistently.
We are young leaders, scholars, parents, artists, and poets. We are survivors of the systems meant to house us, educate us, correct us, and care for us.
Our Leaders
Meyia
Meyia is a San Jose Native, currently studying Film and Leadership Studies. Meyia has goals of graduating high school and continuing her education as a Film Major at De Anza Community College while building better connections with people and helping them heal through storytelling. For Meyia, Liberation means to heal and grow your spiritual, mental, and emotional well-being.
Angel
Angel is an artist, writer, story collector, observer, and hard worker. Angel Ramos is a YLM Young Leader and advocates for change in education, youth justice, and more. Angel feels the most liberated when riding his motorcycle because he feels like he has complete control of his freedom. Other than doing what he’s passionate about with YLM, Angel has always wanted to travel the world such as Mexico, Hawaii, and even where the spirits touch the earth through the Northern Lights. Angel also wants to accomplish a triathlon and get his pilot license. Angel has always desired to be nomadic, but his family responsibilities come first. Angel is a creative, soulful introvert who loves what he’s doing for his community and fellow young adults.
Maria
Maria, is a resilient immigrant woman who possesses a strong sense of determination. Her aspirations entail attaining a degree in law, with the ultimate goal of aiding her community. Maria firmly believes that true liberation manifests itself in the ability to express oneself freely and to overcome past traumas. She strives to utilize her personal experiences and vocal abilities to advocate for those who are unable to advocate for themselves. During her leisure time, Maria enjoys spending quality time with her beloved canine companions.
Victor
Victor Lopez is an adventurous, reliable, and sincere person pursuing his dream job by earning his education in Hospitality Management Degree. Victor has a mission to accomplish going back to college, building his credit, achieving life skills, and buying a house. In the eyes and ears of Victor, Liberation means breaking chains of generational cycles and patterns. Victor’s plans are to enroll in college and discover where he best fits in his dream career.
Angelina S.
Angelina S. is the internal fellow for YLM, she is motivated by family and friends to pursue a career in systems change so that she can create a better future for her son and many others. Angelina is passionate about understanding the human mind so that she can better support the neurodivergent people in her life. She defines liberation as no child or human feeling, seeing, or hearing they can’t do or believe freely. A liberation of social constructs to freely explore a sense of innocence and experiences by allowing children to be children and adults to be who they truly feel they are. For Angelina, rediscovering liberation comes through the exploration of the world like visiting the northern lights where it’s believed the spirits of our ancestors come to dance. Angelina continues to learn and grow professionally so that she can positively change our communities for the better.
Alumni
Thank you to our alumni who have taken a step back.
Clarissa Gonzalez
Hiba
Sofia Jaquez
Carlos Pacheco Miranda
Nicole Torres
Alejandro Ortega
Projects
Youth Forum and Youth Forum 2.0
In 2021 the Work2future Youth Forum was launched. The Youth Forum creates a positive, youth-centered space that brings together service providers and agencies, as well as young people with lived experience, to create a common vision for a “system” that can consistently support young people to achieve the education and employment milestones necessary to succeed in the Silicon Valley economy. Because of work and research done by the Youth Forum, the work2future Workforce Development Board adopted our recommendation to create a Youth Committee to support the development of youth workforce policy. This recommendation included a requirement to have at least two young people with lived experience as full voting committee members. Maria Vans and Sofia Jaquez sit in those seats.
In 2023, the Youth Forum 2.0 convened with more young leaders from YLM and other youth groups to establish three measurable policy recommendation(s) to inform the new work2future Youth Committee is in its first year of operation.
Read more about Youth Forum 2.0 here.
Youth Forum 2.0 Advocacy Letter
Youth Amity Summit
YLM created The Amity Youth Summit with months of feedback from dozens of youth across the county by hosting Design Days where young people designed what they would want from a summit. The Amity Youth Summit focused on 3 key areas: Network building, power building, and skill building. It was attended by around 100 people, youth, and their adult allies. They benefited from our Opportunity Fair where they explored low to no-barrier community resources providing employment and education opportunities, financial wellness information, mental health resources, volunteering opportunities, opportunities to join youth empowerment groups, and more!! We also hosted 8 workshops on topics from mental health and self-empowerment, to activism, to financial wellness and education.
Bill of Rights for Children and Young Adults
In 2022 the Youth Liberation Movement partnered with Kids in Common to create a Bill of Rights for Children and Youth. Through surveys and group conversations, YLM built the Bill of Rights on the values, knowledge, and experiences of over 250 Santa Clara County Youth. They answered “What rights do you think you should have as a young person” in unique and informative ways from their great diversity of backgrounds. With several enthusiastic members of the youth community, we used the statements of the 250 youth to draft the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was published in January of 2023 and has since gotten the endorsements of hundreds of people, multiple cities, government departments, youth groups and nonprofits. We proudly hold the Santa Clara County Bill of Rights for Children and Youth as an aspirational document that can help young people advocate for their needs.
View and endorse the Bill of Rights.