Building Change Through Youth Leadership

Before launching Streetlight, our leadership team spent years supporting youth-led campaigns across New Orleans. These early efforts shaped who we are today and proved what we’ve always believed: young people can lead powerful movements for justice.

Every campaign in our history began with a simple but radical idea: Black and brown youth know their communities best -- and should lead the fight for change.

These early campaigns became the proving ground for everything Streetlight does today. Through years of organizing, we built relationships with community partners who still collaborate with us. We tested and refined the methods we now use to train new leaders. Most importantly, we showed that youth-driven change delivers real results. Time and again, we’ve seen young people develop their skills, build lasting partnerships, and create the kind of change that sticks, because it comes from the community itself.

Today, when we launch a new campaign or welcome new youth leaders, we're building on a foundation of trust, proven strategies, and deep community roots that took years to establish. Our history forms the bedrock of our future impact.

Enrichment 2 Empowerment (E2E) was a youth-led violence prevention program rooted in research, storytelling, and political education. Designed for New Orleans youth ages 14–19, E2E combined YPAR (Youth Participatory Action Research), sociopolitical development, and creative expression to investigate how structural violence impacted young people — and what needed to change.

The 2023–24 cohort conducted a yearlong mixed-methods research project, including surveys and interviews with community members about safety, mental health, education, and leadership. Their findings informed a powerful youth-produced documentary, This is New Orleans: Stories of Truth and Hope, which they screened for families, community members, and city officials.

Alongside the film, youth participants developed formal recommendations calling for increased funding for youth programs, safe spaces, therapy access, job opportunities, and culturally responsive education. They partnered with the Big Easy Budget Coalition to push for a $20 million investment in youth and supported younger students in launching their own YPAR projects.

E2E was a collaboration between the Center for Youth Equity at Tulane and the CDC-funded Youth Violence Prevention Center. It stood as one of the most comprehensive, youth-led public education campaigns around violence prevention in New Orleans.

Twisted Garden is a graphic novel written by Black New Orleans high school students, illustrated by professional artists from around the world. Each chapter explores the experience of anti-Blackness in local schools — from dress code enforcement and school policing to curriculum erasure and teacher bias.

The project used speculative fiction, memoir, and visual storytelling to challenge harmful school practices and imagine radically different futures. Twisted Garden was distributed to educators, organizers, and community members as both an artistic achievement and a tool for policy change.

The Junior Civic Safety Council was a youth-led advisory board focused on community safety, public health, and systems accountability. Created in partnership with the Center for Youth Equity, the Council brought together young people from across the city to identify safety issues, conduct community-based research, and make formal recommendations to local institutions.

From school safety audits to citywide listening sessions, the Council challenged adult-centered narratives about violence and redefined what safety means for youth. Their work influenced cross-sector conversations around youth participation in public decision-making.

The YPAR Academy was a three-week summer program where youth learned to use research as a tool for action. Participants designed and carried out a mixed-methods research project exploring how young people in New Orleans experience power — in schools, neighborhoods, and everyday life.

Working as a team, they collected surveys, facilitated interviews, and analyzed findings to inform public storytelling and advocacy. The program emphasized skill-building in research, organizing, and narrative strategy, equipping youth to investigate systemic issues and push for change in their own communities.