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YWu's membership is comprised of two Sister Circles of women ages 13-35. All our campaign, programs and actions are based on the leadership and decisions of our young women.

Circle of Strength is a free, year round leadership development and youth organizing project. We are young women of color between the ages of 13 – 19. Our circle meets weekly to build leadership, express ourselves, be creative, learn and share. We come together to empower others, to be empowered, and to fight for what we believe in. Circle of Strength focuses on youth rights, self determination, and cultural pride. We build leaders and take action in our communities. COS meets weekly on Thursday, 4pm to 6pm. For more info email Denicia Cadena at dcadena@youngwomenunited.org.

Circle of Fire is YWU’s organizing circle for women of color ages 19-35. COF is committed to building leadership and sisterhood among young women of color. We meet once a month for dialogues, sessions and trainings to build power and create change, by and for us. Contact Elizabeth Silva at esilva@youngwomenunited.org to join our efforts.

How we build Sisterhood and strive for Justice: We use all our trainings to build sisterhood, increase the critical analysis of our members and as a recruitment tool in which to build our base of conscious women for justice.  The following are the ways in which we do this:

Campaign Development/ Organizing – YWU uses a community organizing model which centers its decisions by and for young women of color to create the changes we determine as important for ourselves and in our communities. We represent the interests of membership driven goals, decisions, and strategies. Our campaigns are developed with our members that include set goals and objectives we use to evaluate our work, celebrate our progress and strategize our future plans.

Leadership Development:
YWU’s model is immersed in building the voice and leadership of young women of color. We believe that when women are given a voice, information and space to make decisions, they will come up with solutions that benefit the whole community. All our activities, actions and events are planned and lead by our members, always increasing their public speaking, facilitation and planning skills. 

Art in Organizing YWU provides a space for women to express their creativy, challenge how media protrays us and create the images and media we want to represent us and the issues we work on.

Trainings- Sister Education:We hold monthly intergenerational meetings with both our teen age women and young adult women membership, in which we do teambuilding, popular education workshops, knowledge sharing and skills building to build our collective analysis. We also provide interactive trainings to the community or partner organizations on; Sex Ed, homophobia, incense making, Youth Organizing, gender justice, reproductive justice and movment building.

Movement Building - YWU works in connection with the larger social justice and reproductive justice movments. We know that the struggle for justice in all our communities must include the voice and action of many. We look to align our work with others who work for social justice. Please see our movment builiding tab to see all the awesome projects and networks we are currently working with.    

Power, Strength, Fierce Pride…