The Summer Institute
Applications for Summer Institute 2025 are NOW OPEN
APPLY BY MONDAY, APRIL 14TH, 2025
The YA-YA Network Summer Institute is a radical learning experience founded in the belief that young people in their collective power, will rise up and address issues impacting their community as activists and organizers. In this stipended 7-week program youth ages 15-19 are trained in anti-oppression, organizing skills, and political education through transformative workshops, and visits to city-wide organizations fighting for change.
Starting with an orientation in July, the program runs every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 10:00am - 4:00pm (with an hour for lunch) from July until the middle of August. Meetings will be IN PERSON in Manhattan. Participants who successfully complete the Summer Institute will be compensated for their participation and role in our community.
7 Weeks of Summer at a Glance
The workshops in this week introduce you to systems and beliefs that explain why so few people fight for change. We examine the American Dream as it relates to migration, race, class, nationality, and gender as well as other workshops that help us reflect on the prejudices we all carry and must unlearn.
Known to be our most pivotal week, The Life Maps week creates a space of healing, resilience, and empowerment. We share our life stories to understand why our work as YA-YAs, leaders, and community members informed by the experiences we’ve had and the changes we need to see.
In the Anti-Racism Week, YA-YA's engage in problematizing structures of racism in American society. Looking at policies, historical elements, and their own life experiences --YA-YAs will be challenged to understand their relationship to race and racialized structures of oppression.
The Beyond Capitalism Week of the Summer Institute challenges you to examine and think critically on mass incarceration, the prison industrial complex, and the communities working to combat the inequalities of the criminal justice system.
This block focuses on the fight for migrant justice. We reflect on the purposes of migration and what our own relationships are to it. Among many other things, we also discuss the policies that impact the lives of undocumented people and how they can be changed.
In the Gender Justice Week, participants will be deconstructing their own and their community's expectations of gender and sexuality in society and explore what it means to move toward the full acceptance of all identities while recognizing and thinking critically of the intersections between gender justice, incarceration, and much more.
We close out the Summer Institute by learning about more opportunities at YA-YA for the Fall, as well as have our annual YA-YA Picnic in the park with a historical tour of places YA-YA's have gone for the past 21 years.
During the Summer Institute, YA-YA collaborates with other community-based organizations, learning about the work they do and how we can become involved as they connect to the different themes of the Summer Institute Weeks.
YA-YA's at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project during Gender Justice Week learning about the work they do with the Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Community as it pertains to incarceration.
photography by Pat Lin
YA-YA's at the Schomburg Center visiting the Black Power Exhibition; photography by Pat Lin
photography by Pat Lin
photography by Pat Lin
Ya-YA's with Youth Against Displacement and Chinese Staff and Workers Association on a tour of 85 Bowery, China Town, and LES learning about the impact of development and displacement; photography by Pat Lin
Summer Institute Throwbacks!
Summer Institute Lead Facilitators
Avaneque, Summer Institute 2020 Lead Facilitator; Summer Institute 2019 participant; Student at Princeton University
Our 2019 Summer Institute Facilitators. from left to right: Destiny and Divine; photography by Ellie Jayakar
Meet our Summer 2020 Lead Facilitators; they led us through the Summer Institute as it ran virtually for the first time!
Marcel, Summer Institute 2020 Lead Facilitator; Summer Institute 2018 Participant; Member of Facilitation Squad at YA-YA
“💛This could be YOU💛”
For questions about anything Summer related, contact our Director of Youth Development, Divine, at divine@yayanetwork.org
Summer Institute Committee
Photography by Ellie Jayakar