Justice Ambassadors Youth Council (JAYC) is a platform for 18 to 24 year olds, who have been previously justice-involved and youth residing in New York City, to participate in an eight week, structured classroom setting with city officials to hold conversations about challenging community issues, including racial inequality, poverty, trauma, and to co-develop policy proposals.
On Tuesday, December 8, the Justice Ambassadors Youth Council (JAYC) hosted a graduation ceremony to confer certificates of completion to program participants and present the policy proposals from the fourth cohort of JAYC. JAYC participants and staff safely gathered in person at the New Settlement Community Center in the Bronx to celebrate the end of their semester and present the policies they worked on about issues that affect their communities to city officials.
JAYC empowers youth through leadership development and providing them with the space to reshape the very systems that often fail them and their communities. Participants develop a framework to begin their work as the future leaders of New York City. Currently, no other platform exists where young citizens meet regularly with city officials leading agencies that have the ability to positively redirect the lives of vulnerable youth before they enter the criminal justice system. By bridging the gap between these agencies and the youth that they intend to serve, JAYC fosters community engagement in a way that shows promising signs for future inclusion of directly affected populations in the process of writing the policy that affects their communities.
We can’t continue to judge people by one bad decision they make. Instead let’s judge them by the potential they have to change and become a better person.
Learn more about the Justice Ambassadors Youth Council and stay tuned for announcements on recruitment for the spring semester cohort.