Day One is excited to announce the third annual You(th) Already Know! (YAK) gathering. Created by and for young people, YAK aims to build knowledge and community around ending intimate partner violence. Day One and YAK are working to empower and enable young people to build a community dedicated to supporting each other and raising awareness about dating violence. We encourage all New York City-based youth leaders and activists to attend this free event.
Peer leadership is a crucial part of relationship education. YAK allows youth voices to be amplified, and encourages young adults to assume leadership positions amongst their peers. YAK’s purpose is to bring youth together to discuss relevant issues with informed support from peers. Planned workshops include discussion on consent, combating toxic masculinity, bystander intervention and more.
In order to make this as safe a space as possible, the youth organizing this event ask adults to come not as facilitators or chaperones, but as allies. It is very important to recognize the privilege that adults carry with their age. Empowering youth to know how to make safe decisions for themselves means we must give them the space and freedom to do so. To this end, the young folks involved with YAK have created a set of guidelines for adult allies at the conference.
They are:
- Validate youth knowledge and experience.
- Be open to learning new information.
- Be committed to building stronger relationships with youth.
- Don’t be a know it all!
- Understand your privileges as an adult.
- Don’t demand respect from youth, earn it.
In addition to all of the above, YAK will include free breakfast and lunch during the event and a raffle of some awesome prizes, including a FujiFilm Instax Mini 9, a portable charger, a bluetooth speaker and much more.
Come gather with us for this community building event!
Date: February 9th 2019
Time: 9:30am-4:30pm
Location: Center for Social Innovation 601 West 26th Street.