In the past 10 years, 500,000 people have migrated from Puerto Rico, mostly young people. In this context, Juventudes was born, our youth initiative that aims to uphold and further develop the work of organized youth in the archipelago to confront the barriers that threaten all possibility of sustaining a dignified and full life. What does it mean to create an initiative centering youth in a country that expels them? The certainty that the oppressions we face under a colonial system will not disappear if we do not confront them in an organized way.

Throughout our journey, we have discovered that, although there is not a single way to organize and do political work, three things were indispensable. Collective healing is fundamental in aligning common efforts; it is necessary to understand and remember that every role within the organizing work matters, and finally, that we have to create the material conditions to carry out the organizing work.

The Youth Initiative was born in 2022. However, in 2020 we partnered with Revista étnica and Colectivo ilé to build Afrojuventudes, an anti-racist school of 50 young people from all over the archipelago. This alliance provided us with great lessons on how to carry out our future program. With those learnings, and in collaboration with Caribana Coop and The Semilla Project, in 2022 we started an exploratory process to get to know the different groups around the archipelago, mainly youth-led. This helped us make a Directory for the groups to get to know each other. Then, we identified a diversity of groups with similar questions and ideas related to the country we want to build. We then created the first leadership development curriculum and, together with Caribana Coop, co-facilitated the sessions with the first youth cohort. After 7 months we closed this program and this stage of the initiative. 

At the moment, we’re especially excited to be designing the next steps of this project. None of this would be possible without your help. It fills us with hope to think that from this space, a seed was cultivated to practice in the present, and on a daily basis, the dignified life that we all long for.