Every Voice in Action Foundation is creating a new charter high school!
In the spirit of our foundation, we'll work with youth and community partners to make this dream a reality: creating the opportunity for all youth to realize their academic, creative, and leadership potential. Read More...
Our Tradition
Since 1994, Every Voice in Action Foundation has awarded several million dollars in grants to schools and non-profit organizations in greater Tucson for youth voice and leadership projects. We have provided essential support to Voices: Community Stories Past and Present, the YWCA, TUSD’s Finding Voice Project, the Social Justice Education Project, Teen Court, Prescott College’s Ironwood Tree Experience and Greenlots, and many other great programs.
To forward our mission—to ignite and support youth voice, infusing the community with the unique perspectives of young people—we have also worked with 15 teens each year in our Youth Philanthropy Crew to award $50,000 in grants, for a total of $500,000 from 2000-2010! We’re immensely proud of our Youth Crews and all that their grantees have accomplished!
In addition to grantmaking, the foundation has created hands-on, youth leadership opportunities through media activism with our Hi-Tech Team. We also worked closely with Access Tucson, PRO Neighborhoods, and Tierra y Liberdad Organization to boost opportunities for youth leadership within these successful organizations.
Same Mission, More Youth, Greater Impact
During the 2010-11 school year, we are hard at work as the founding sponsor of the Western Institute for Leadership Development, a new college prep, charter high school to open in Tucson in August 2011. Starting with approximately 90 freshman and sophomores, the school will expand to include grades 11 and 12 over the next two years and, ultimately, serve a diverse student body of approximately 300 students.
A free, public high school, the Western Institute has dual goals: academic excellence and leadership development, preparing all students for post-secondary education, careers, and lifelong action to create a better world.
The core activities of the foundation’s Youth Crew and media teams—studying community issues, directing resources for positive change, and voicing youth perspectives—will now become the everyday life of students at the Western Institute.
Capability, Creativity, and Community
The Western Institute will provide students with a supportive, empowering, “can-do” learning environment. Academics will be based on the very successful national model of project-based learning at High Tech High schools in San Diego, CA. Building on that strong base, the Western Institute will develop all students' leadership skills through the “youth in governance” model—from co-creating working agreements with teachers and participating in school governance to accomplishing real-world projects that impact the Tucson community, nation, and world.
In that spirit, the foundation and school governing board will collaborate with youth, our grantees, and old and new friends in the community to design and develop the Western Institute. We will strive to be a “lab” for innovating and testing the best practices in education, youth development, and community development. And we will strive to share our knowledge and resources widely to enrich other schools and communities as well as our own.
Thanks to the many friends and supporters who have already contributed ideas, energy, and support!
Developing the Western Institute
Early this summer, several members of our foundation Board of Directors became the founding board members for the new 501(c)3, non-profit educational corporation that will govern the new school. Both organizations will collaborate to accomplish our joint mission.
In May and June, we had several exciting brainstorming meetings with youth, non-profit, and neighborhood leaders. We got (and are still getting) great input on the kind of school that will best serve our students and community.
We incorporated many of these ideas into our charter application, submitted in July 2010, and into the big-picture design of our school. Now, in mid-September, we are currently one of 9 charter applicants in Arizona being reviewed by the state charter board (out of 35 that applied in July).
Encouraged, the foundation is now looking for the ideal school site to purchase in central Tucson, and the school’s governing board will soon begin recruiting our startup principal/director and staff.
Very soon, after this time of infrastructure development, we will reach out and actively work with all of our stakeholders—youth, parents, government and community leaders, business and non-profit organizations, teachers, and other schools—to develop a high school that will best serve its students, families, and community.
We MAJORLY look forward to working with you!