The Changemakers mission is to empower promising youth leaders to drive positive impact in Tulsa right now and into the future.
Vision: A future where Tulsa is a model city for youth-driven impact. Youth are core catalysts for impact in their communities, and communities are actively engaged in identifying, developing, and empowering youth as leaders. Tulsa is consistently cultivating highly effective community leaders eager to empower successive generations.
In their first year of Teach For America in 2015, Jake Lerner and Andrew Spector recognized two things: 1) their 5th and 6th grade classrooms were filled with promising young leaders capable of driving positive impact in Tulsa right now, and 2) although they, as outsiders and newcomers, were being told by the Tulsa community that they are valuable community assets, their students, the insiders, were not always getting the same message.
Jake and Andrew started Tulsa Changemakers because they believe the youth of Tulsa and their families are critical community assets. They are driven by their conviction that long-term and sustainable community transformation happens when communities are mobilized to drive their own change.
Tulsa Changemakers achieves their mission and works toward their vision in three primary ways:
- Listen, Listen, Act afterschool program is a semester long, 25-session afterschool youth leadership development and action program that empowers elementary, middle, and high school students, from Title I schools in Tulsa Public and Union Public Schools, to make meaningful change in their schools and communities.
- Pathways Programs are initiatives that support in building a holistic ecosystem of opportunities for young people to develop and apply leadership skills. These programs include: Power of Youth, an out-of-school, weekly, 9-session crash course for 7th-11th graders in how to show up in their community; City Lab, supporting a partnership with TPS and TCC to engage TPS high school students in a spring break and summer program to solve real-world problems through design thinking; Monroe Philanthropists, a youth-led philanthropy program at Monroe Demonstration Academy, in partnership with Ed Darby Foundation; and Fuerza KW, an intergenerational community organizing program in Kendall-Whittier, in partnership with Growing Together.
- Training and Consulting builds capacity in adults and systems to elevate youth voice and leadership more effectively and authentically.
Visit the Tulsa Changemakers Website
Interested in getting involved with Tulsa Changemakers? Email Jake Lerner at jake@leadershiptulsa.org.