Youth Visionary Collective 2022 Yearly Report
We at Roots & Routes and the Youth Visionary Collective are incredibly thankful for all the people and organizations that have made this year possible—especially our amazing interns, who have grown this community into what it is today! 2022 was an important year, full of reflections and ideas and program developments. The YVC continues to grow and prosper, and in 2022 the youth took charge and put systems in place that have made the YVC youth-led and running smoothly from season to season.
The YVC has grown to be an integral part of Roots & Routes. With intercultural and intergenerational collaborations, alternatives to normative Western education, and peer-to-peer teaching, the YVC is a place for youth to develop a sense of belonging and community.
Guest speaker Keyra Espinoza - Afro-Ecuadorian activist, YVC Meeting Feb 13, 2022.
Sunday Guest Teachers
During the bi-weekly Sunday guest teachers—a youth favorite—we invite speakers from across the world, often Indigenous, who share their teachings and culture with the youth. In 2022 they ranged from peace-makers and social media experts to filmmakers, activists, and Indigenous leaders.
To explore more in depth what each guest speaker spoke to the YVC about, please check our blogs and newsletters put together by the Blog & Newsletter team; R&R Seasonal Offerings #3:
Happy Spring Season!; R&R Seasonal Offerings #4: A Time to Rejoice in Renewal. You can sign up for R&R’s Seasonal Offerings on the bottom of the page.
The YVC Teams
Six invaluable teams that make up the Collective since the start of Roots & Routes’ program in 2020. What started as a way for youth to come together during the pandemic has now blossomed into a world-wide collective of youth passionate about taking care of this planet we call home and all its inhabitants, and making sure that future generations can do so as well.
The teams meet as a collective every Sunday. Every other week a guest teacher comes to speak with the youth, and the weeks in between they reflect on these conversations and engage in discussions and dialogue around the themes covered. The youth also meet weekly within their individual teams to plan the coming week, review their work, and most importantly, to connect and learn from each other. At the end of each season we hold a Cultural Night, where the youth gather online to share their culture through sharing food recipes and eating with one another, as well as share their “roses and thorns” from the completed season. The teams are as follows;
Steering Committee: They write the agendas for the weekly collective meetings, and the interviews for the bi-weekly guest teachers. They also assist with planning and funding for the YVC.
Pluriversity: Roots & Routes is becoming a Pluriversity—an alternative educational platform. The Pluriversity team is working on a pilot course for the Pluriversity.
Social Media: They are the ones making and posting all the content on our instagram. Check it out to see their amazing work! Currently they are working on completely revamping our social media to better align with the direction Roots & Routes is taking.
Blog & Newsletter: They write the blogs about our guest teachers, as well as compile these blogs into our Seasonal Offerings Bulletin.
Podcast: They are working hard to create and launch our upcoming podcast featuring the guest teacher interviews.
Rights of Nature (RoN): Our Spanish-speaking team, comprised of youth in the Chocó Rainforest. They work on our Spanish instagram account, which focuses on highlighting the Rights of Nature lawsuit in Ecuador
We have also recently started a YVC Envisioning Group with key past and present YVC leaders, who are taking the help to develop future YVC directions and how it will fit into the online/in-person Pluriversity that R&R is becoming. They are helping to plan the in-person pilot program in Ecuador, California, and the Galapagos.
YVC Envisioning Group
Measuring Success
As indicated in Figure 1. below, we have had between 18-30 interns per season, from a variety of countries. The blue bar indicates the number of interns per season, and the green bar indicates the number of countries. Towards the end of the year, there were fewer new interns joining the YVC due to strategizing with continuing youth collaborators already familiar with projects, and thus, helping them to specialize.
Throughout 2022 we had 60 interns currently living in 24 different countries, but originally from 29 different countries. There were interns from every continent except Oceania/Australia (Europe, South America, North America, Africa, Asia). As can be seen in the pie chart below (figure 2), 44.2% of the interns were located in the United States.
As many of our interns are studying in a country different from their home country, the distribution of countries looks different when taking descent into account. As we put intercultural collaborations at the center of all our work, this is important to us at Roots & Routes. Thus, we want to recognize the wide variety of cultures participating in the Youth Visionary Collective, and all the amazing cultures we have the privilege of learning from in our discussions. As the pie chart below indicates, 32.7% of the interns are from the United States.
YVC Intern Reflections - Rose & Thorn
At the end of each season the interns get together one last time before the break to say goodbye and thank you to those who are leaving us, and to reflect and assess the past season. This has been a great way to gather feedback on the inner workings of the Youth Visionary Collective, what we should continue with, and what we should further develop.
From this, we have done a series of changes, such as adding a Cultural Night to each season, where the interns get together and share a meal from their country, and share cultural experiences to better get to know and learn from each other, which has been greatly appreciated. In the name of transparency, reflection, and learning, we would like to share some of the feedback received during the 2022 seasons with you.
The feedback gathered from the interns during the four 2022 seasons showed that the interns loved the bi-weekly guest speakers, the open, friendly, and family-like atmosphere we cultivate. They also appreciated how much they’ve learnt since joining, especially about Indigenous cultures and knowledges, as well as about each other’s cultures and life experiences. YVC interns’ suggestions for improvements for future seasons included the following: setting up systems to ensure we keep a core group of people within the teams throughout the season, more meetings with increased bonding/relationship-building activities between teams, as well as
We would like to take this opportunity to thank every single intern that has given their time and effort to the Youth Visionary Collective, which has resulted in reported increased networks, professional skills, and sense of belonging for them and simultaneous benefits for R&R’s YVC community! We appreciate you so much, Roots & Routes would not be the same without you. In fact, you are Roots & Routes! We also would like to show our appreciation for all YVC guest teachers who have shared their valuable insights, knowledge, and experiences with the collective. Now we look forward to another year full of (re)learning, re-storying, and decolonizing our ways of relating to one another and building a world with more climate justice! Thank you to our funders and our R&R community for your support of this life-changing journey for all of us in the YVC.