Young Women Empowered Creates Space for Teens to Learn and Grow

by Jas Keimig

Even though Women's History Month is drawing to a close, that doesn't stop the important work for gender equity being done by many in the Seattle area.

Young Women Empowered (Y-WE) is a Columbia City-based organization that does just that, offering programs and mentorship opportunities to a diverse community of young women and gender-expansive teens across the King County area. Collectively, both teens and mentors envision a future for young people that's rooted in social justice, equity, and inclusivity. And, most importantly, they are providing a space for kids to become leaders and figure out who they are in an autonomous, supported environment.

"A common phrase we hear from our mentors, as well as our staff, is that Y-WE is the space we wish we had as young people to help us navigate not only our identities and our gifts and the things that we hold, but just life in general," said Aya Zouhri, Y-WE program and outreach coordinator, in a recent interview. "And so our goal is to continue creating and co-creating that space with the young people we serve, centering BIPOC and trans folks."

Rose Waterstone first founded the organization in 2010 as a seven-month leadership program, connecting teens from low-income or immigrant backgrounds with mentors in different fields. But it proved so popular that the teens from the initial program fundraised $10,000 to keep Y-WE in business. Over a decade later, the organization is going strong, establishing a dozen programs and counting hundreds of participants as alums.

After being previously based out of the Eastside and a few temporary spaces, Y-WE has called Columbia City home for the past two years, serving teens generally aged 12 to 19 from Everett down to Federal Way and greater King County. (In the last fiscal year, it served a total of 791 youths.) Many Y-WE alumni who have graduated out of the organization's official age groups go on to become program assistants, coordinators, and mentors. While "women" is part of its title, it's often presented with an asterisk to indicate that its definition of "woman" includes those who identify as "women, girls, trans, non-binary or gender expansive," specifically centering members of the BIPOC community.

The programming Y-WE offers is robust and specific, organizing affinity groups specific to trans teens or teens of color as well as programs dedicated to skill-learning.

Its Black Girls/NB Bike program reduces barriers to biking by teaching teens road skills and giving participants access to a bike at the end of the program. Because it's targeted toward Black teens, mentors also help kids navigate what it's like to bike as a Black cyclist in a majority-white city. And programs like Y-WE Tech get youth involved in tech projects with mentors who do deep dives on things like coding, AI, user interference, and other systems of technology.

"We focus on helping young people connect to people in the tech field who may identify in the same way as them — femme, nonbinary, trans, or queer — and what that experience is like," Zouhri added. "And giving them touch points so they can get really deep in it and not have just an abstract view of what [working in tech] looks like, but a physical manifestation of what that is."

Its Nature Connections program is centered around food justice, environmental sustainability, and getting teens outdoors and connected to food sources. Y-WE shares space with other organizations, like Solid Ground and Salsa de la Vida, at Marra Farm in South Park. Because the neighborhood is a food desert, Zouhri says the teens are learning "the ways that systems have impacted our ability to grow and access food" while also understanding what's in their power to reintroduce those systems and do them differently.

Just as important as learning new skills or getting a good footing in a certain industry is learning how to address and navigate mental health, especially as a BIPOC or queer/trans teen. One of Y-We's latest efforts is Healing Justice Collective, which launched in February of last year and connects teens with culturally responsive mental health practitioners and resources, like talk therapy, though Y-We eventually wants to expand coverage to alternative healing pathways, like reiki and sound healing.

"We're able to offset the cost of therapy for a certain number of young people that sign up for our services and then just provide wraparound resources and support so they're plugged into the resources that already exist in the community," said Zouhri.

Looking toward the future, Y-WE plans to continue its programming work, but always with the flexibility to change, expand, and serve the needs of its community.

"Y-WE is constantly an iterative experience. At the end of each school year and summer program, we ask our young folks what they want to see and what they want to do. When we do our brainstorming for the next programs, we integrate their feedback to help steer our ship in that direction and ensure that we're incorporating the things that they feel are important and necessary for us to think about and work on," said Zouhri. "So no two years at Y-WE look the same, which is pretty cool."

Featured Image: Black Girls/NB Bike is one of several programs Y-WE organizes to teach teens skills and leadership. (Photo courtesy of Y-WE; edits by the Emerald team.)