The Center for Youth and Society was founded in September 1999 by youth issues author, educator and activist, William Ayers. It was launched with lead support from the University of Illinois at Chicago, which made a one-time grant over two years to develop what could eventually become the Midwest’s premier site of urban education innovation and advocacy. Housed within UIC’s College of Education, in its first year the Center exploded into action; a collective of advanced and newer education students, or Center Associates, all committed to urban education as a social justice enterprise, initiated arts, literacy, and critical issues-focused community education programs and activities in neighborhoods across Chicago. Some of these programs were sustained through the Center’s second year, and others were discontinued, refelcting lessons learned, and the evolving interests of Center Associates and Ayers. Currently the Center operates with a full-time staff of four.

The Center has three primary goals:

I. To involve youth in identifiying the challenges they face and the solutions, and to activate youth to participate more fully in their own development and in civic life.

II. To advance learning, both by engaging communities more fully in addressing youth issues, and by providing intergenerational and cross-cultural opportunities for learning through community education projects.

III. To educate adults to work more effectively and more comrehensively with youth by changing patterns in the fields of education and youth work, convening youth workers across disciplines to bridge the conceptual and programmatic gaps between formal and informal education, and between school, family and community.

Center projects have included a Youth Speak-Out on racism, a symposium on Youth, Identity, and Culture, an adult literacy program, staff-development seminars for youth workers, and Community Justice Initiative.

Website: http://www.youthandsociety.org/