With support from the California Arts Council, Center for Young Women’s Development (Young Women’s Freedom Center) will engage formerly incarcerated women and gender nonconforming people in a project that combines art and healing. Through intensive retreats women will explore storytelling as a courageous act of vulnerability and power.
Our work includes leadership development and economic empowerment in the San Francisco Bay Area, local and statewide organizing, and training, and systems transformation projects.
Locally, we provide gender specific, trauma informed support and leadership development through group and one on one work in San Francisco’s juvenile hall and area jails, life coaching, groups for young mothers, groups for young women who have been involved in sex work or who have been trafficked, employment training opportunities, a writing and creative expression program, reentry support, and a critical consciousness raising program for young system involved women.
We have created a twelve point Bill of Rights for system involved women and are engaged in activities throughout the state which will lead to its adoption in institutions and organizations statewide. Our work also includes research, training, and technical assistance.