Crossroads Fund is excited to announce our 2013 Youth Fund for Social Change grantees! Below you will find the complete list of grantees, as well as a reflection on the Youth Fund grantmaking process by Veronica Morris Moore, a member of the Youth Fund grantmaking committee and the Lisa Fittko Intern at Crossroads Fund.For the past two years I have had the privilege of being a part of the volunteer grantmaking committee for the Youth Fund for Social Change. The Youth Fund provides resources to youth working on social justice issues in their communities. It’s been a pleasure to meet other activists and leaders of the Chicago youth movement. It has also added to my development as an organizer and a leader. Being able to think critically about other youth programs with a group of my peers naturally makes me more critical of my own contribution to the social justice work I’m a part of. In my opinion, Crossroads Fund has a grantmaking process that should be a model for many foundations that support youth social justice work. Crossroads Fund incorporates youth input not only in the application process but in the decision making process as well. It’s empowering to know that because of my own experience in the youth movement a foundation appreciates not only what I have to say about my work but the work of others as well. It creates an opportunity for me to build as a leader in ways that I wouldn’t just from my community experience alone. I feel immensely proud and privileged to be a part of the Youth Fund for Social Change grantmaking committee, and I applaud Crossroads Fund for being such a resilient resource for youth involved in social justice movements. In Chicago so many youth organizations are having to cut back or disband completely due to financial struggles, making Crossroads Fund’s Youth Fund for Social Change a vital resource for young activist and their organizations.YOUTH FUND FOR SOCIAL CHANGE 2013 GRANTSA Long Walk Home, Inc. Girl/Friends Leadership Institute is an art-based, youth-led program in the North Lawndale neighborhood that allows young women to address dating, domestic and sexual violence in their communities and schools. $1,000Affinity Community Services Leadership Institute’s Youth Summit is directed by a cohort of young LGBT African American women. The summit brings together youth working across issues and neighborhoods to address issues related to internalized oppression and violence. $1,000Blocks Together Peace Center is a restorative justice based space run by trained youth.  It promotes youth organizing campaigns with the goal of a restorative justice system as an alternative to the school to prison pipeline. $4,000Center of Change (C2) is a youth organizing project led by and for youth of color challenging the school to prison pipeline and Chicago Public Schools zero tolerance policies, while pushing for restorative justice as an alternative to youth criminalization and incarceration. $3,500Chicago Wisdom Project cultivates youth-driven creative projects in various media to respond to issues of trauma and promote social justice. They involve youth from Hyde Park as well as from an alternative GED program in Harvey, IL. $2,000The Audy Home Campaign works to shut down the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center and replace it with Restorative Justice Hubs.  The hubs will be community based and run by community based organizations. $4,000Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY) is a youth organizing project housed at Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP), working to get a trauma center reopened at the University of Chicago Hospital. $5,000Gary Freedom School Peer Intervention and Behavioral Recovery Program is focused on reducing rates of detention and reforming school discipline policies in Gary, Indiana. $3,500Ollin’s Nonviolence Leadership Institute and the Little Village Youth Groups Nonviolence Network promotes nonviolent resistance techniques and community-building within the Little Village neighborhood. $3,500Young Chicago Authors WordPlay is a weekly writing and performance event for students throughout the city. It provides youth with an opportunity to move out of their neighborhoods and schools to collectively explore issues that affect them. $2,000Young Women’s Empowerment Project’s Street Youth Rise Up campaign organizes around a Bill of Rights drafted by street youth and young people affected by the sex trade and other street economies. It seeks to make youth serving public institutions be more accountable to youth $4,000Youth Outlook organizes LGBTQ youth in the Western Suburbs (Naperville, Aurora, DeKalb and others) to provide community education workshops to counteract heterosexism and homophobia and to promote inclusivity. $2,000