Please contact Rinah Rachel Galper to invite EYC to your organization, school, or community program, become a community partner, or make a donation at joyoushout@gmail.com or 646 241-7555.

Overview: What is Engaging Youth Changemakers (EYC)?

EYC is a new and evolving Joyoushout collaborative initiative that connects past, present, and future generations of changemakers with a commitment to ensuring the well being of our communities and our planet. We build relationships rooted in respect for ourselves, each other, our ancestors and future descendants, the beings that share the earth with us, and our divinity or source as we understand it. Through sharing  stories and visions, intuitive wisdom, skills and resources, time and energy, we collaborate in small and powerful ways to bring joy, beauty, justice, love and care, healing and repair, and creative solutions to the changes and challenges we face.

 

EYC uses an evolving co-learning model in which youth and adult changemakers engage in liberatory and heart centered learning, mutual aid and collaborative legacy building. We offer guidance and practice (skill building) in the following areas:

  • Deep listening, reflection, & collaborative decision making rooted in care and connection
  • Critical thinking, creative problem solving, and conflict resolution
  • Harm reduction, restorative justice and repair
  • Effective communication and networking rooted in strong written and oral literacy
  • Expressive arts for personal and collective healing and transformation
  • Land and community based Collaborative Changemaking Projects (CCPs)**including simple research, design, implementation and evaluation

 **CCPs nurture and match youths’ creative passions, gifts, and skills with local community needs and interests. As we work together, youth gain awareness, agency and a sense of belonging. They learn about and celebrate their community’s history, culture, and resilience, engage in mutual care, address inequities, reduce and repair harm, and create a microcosm of the world we can all thrive in. Adult community changemakers receive fresh perspectives, ideas, energy, and support from youth with new and existing projects. Projects can be simple, thoughtful, and short term or sustained and evolving over time.  

Background

In the summer of 2023, Roberto Young and Rinah Rachel Galper served as youth mentors for 16 youth from all over the U.S. as part of the World Learning Youth Ambassadors Program in Argentina. We mentored them as they took what they learned and experienced in Argentina to create service projects in their own communities. Roberto and Rinah were inspired to create EYC because they saw a need for youth to be more deeply and meaningfully engaged in change work within their own communities. They saw an opportunity to help make youth changemaking more collaborative, creative, caring, and rooted in a critical understanding of how power and privilege function to sustain inequality and perpetuate harm. From 2023 until the present, Rinah and Roberto have been studying change and different modes of communication, cultivating relationships, and developing, piloting and revising EYC with the help of Triangle youth and community contributors. EYC has completed two summer intensives and a seven week Spring hybrid pilot program. We are now poised to bring parts or all of the EYC process, both in person and hybrid, to best support youth changemaking and the needs of our community partners.  

Structure

EYC offers day long and weekend retreats, week-long summer intensives, and an ongoing workshop series. Each of  our offerings incorporate at least 2 of our 7 key components:

 Skill building (see areas in the overview above)

 Explorations of change & changemaking with guest community leaders, educators, healers, & creatives

 Relationship building including peer and adult mentoring and mutual support

 Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating a Collaborative Changemaking Projects (CCPs) with

         community partners (Youth can earn service hours, valuable work experience, & letters of reference)

 Youth presentations and/or a Community Celebration

 Co- creating in-person and/or virtual network for the ongoing sharing of resources, ideas, skills,

         & opportunities

 Coordinating a Yearly youth-led Changemakers Gathering or Summit with Community Partners

EYC Scope and Sequence

EYC is anchored in Joyoushout’s Nature Based 13 Phases of Change within a cycle of creating, growing, evolving and dissolving, and transforming and the evolving student created Joyoushout Changemaker Ecosystem. EYC also draws inspiration and wisdom from the  United Nations Inner Development Framework and the U School model for collaborative change work.  It can be modified in duration, focus, and scope to fit participant and community partner needs, availability, and resources.

1. Incubating the  Mystery  ( Exploring our Multiple Identities)

2. Birthing and Bonding  (Building connections through story sharing; Intro to heart centered communication)

3-4. Finding Ourselves, Our  People, and Our Place (Exploration of trust and belonging and Intro. to collaboration)

5. Exploring and Experimenting ( Researching, Designing and Prototyping)

6. Reflecting and Discernment (Assessing Impact)

7-8. Revising and Refining  (Rethinking and Refining Design and Project)

9. Equilibrium and Flow  (Celebrating and Evaluating what worked)

10. Endings and Transitions  (Completion and  Looking Ahead)

11. Cocooning   (Processing , Challenges and Lessons Learned)

12. Renewal, Remembering and Return (Sustaining and Growing the Work and Creating a Changemakers Network)

13. Joining the Dance (Staying Present and Responsive)

EYC’s Essential Questions Guiding Our Work Together 

  • Where and from whom do you feel the most love, care, and protection?
  • How and to whom do you show your love and care? How do you protect those you love from harm and keep them safe?
  • What makes you resilient (strong, brave, joyful, loving…) ?
  • What gives you a sense of greater purpose and connection to yourself, others, and the world/universe around you?
  • What are your superpowers or gifts?
  • How can you use them to resist, respond to and rectify injustice?
  • What is your vision for a more harmonious, sustainable, equitable, and loving world for you, your community, all living beings, and our planet? What can and will you do to make your vision come to life?

Our Sources for Wisdom and Guidance

EYC draws its inspiration, guidance, and structure from our youth, our thought and project partners, historic and contemporary movement and healing work, and lessons learned through Joyoushout’s ongoing coaching, classes, consulting, and community gatherings. EYC is also guided by the United Nations Inner Development Goals, the changemaking methodology taught and shared by the U-School for Transformation, and the 10 Commitments created by the American Humanist Society. See more information below.

The United Nations Inner Development Goals Framework (IDG)

The IDGF Framework helps us better identify, understand, communicate, develop, integrate the inner skills needed for sustainable development. The Framework is being co-created as a roadmap for navigating and developing our inner lives to catalyze outer change. Rooted in interdisciplinary research, the IDG Framework consists of 5 dimensions with 23 skills of human inner growth and development.  Learn More About the Study

The U-School Model for Collaborative Change Work

10 Commitments from the American Humanist Association’s

Center for Education (Used to clarify our values)

Who Can Apply?

EYC is physically based in the Triangle area of North Carolina. Any local youth in grades 6-12 or young adults interested in developing their changemaking skills, building relationships, and deepening their community engagement are welcome to participate. We can accept participants from outside our area and state if they are willing to work with us virtually. Please see our registration form here or contact Rinah Rachel Galper at joyoushout@gmail.com or (646) 241-7555 with any questions and to book EYC.

What is the cost?

EYC uses a gift economy. This is our way of creating a system of exchange where everyone gives and gets what they need to thrive without judgement or expectation. EYC participants choose any gift amount that fits their budget; no one is turned away. We encourage gifting that allows us to fairly compensate our staff, offer honorariums to guest speakers and trainers, purchase supplies, and cover travel costs. We also appreciate and rely on the generosity of our partners to  sponsor and support our work.

How You Can Support EYC

EYC welcomes and needs individual and community support in the following areas:

  • Invite us to work with your youth and young adults
  • Become a financial sponsor for one or more EYC participants
  • Provide space for our training and mentoring sessions
  • Become a guest community changemaker/speaker during one of our sessions
  • Become a CCP (Collaborative Changemaking Project) host site
  • Volunteer as a 1:1 volunteer peer mentor
  • Make a gift to help us cover the costs of honorariums for guest speakers, trainers  and coaches, supplies, and travel

About the EYC Cofounders:

 Rinah Rachel Galper: Rinah is a veteran educator, program designer, coach, change consultant, and group facilitator with a Masters in Education and over three decades of experience enriching the lives of diverse youth and adults across educational, community, and organizational settings. She is also a published writer, artist, public speaker, ordained spiritual support and clergy member, healer, community connector, and the founder and soul proprietor of Joyoushout: Supporting Youth and Adult Change Makers. For more information, visit joyoushout.com

Roberto Young: Roberto is a PhD student in Anthropology at UChicago specializing in the study and preservation of indigenous languages and a USYA alumnus having participated in the 2015 U.S. Youth Ambassadors (USYA) program with Paraguay. He returned to the USYA program to give back to the program and support future YAs make meaningful change in their local communities and around the world. Contact Roberto at: youngroberto017@gmail.com

2025 Community Contributors

During our Spring pilot project, Rinah Rachel Galper and Roberto Young collaborated with  Dawn Henderson of WeClaim Research, Eddie Swan of TheLRoom, and Roberta Romano of Madre Terra. In addition to these guest speakers, potential partners for 2026 include Angela Airall of Silver and Gold Coaching, Lindy Chichola of Hearth NC, the Beloved Community Center of Greensboro, DCIA, and StandUp-SpeakOut.