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Voices Of Power
Voices of Power is a shared-learning and thought-partnership initiative designed to advance public understanding and strengthen discourse around community safety . At its core, the initiative uses storytelling and the power of narrative change as tools to help communities, youth, credible messengers, and institutions better understand the systemic challenges shaping neighborhood realities — and to collectively identify practical solutions, turning competitors into collaborators.
Power Through Stories
Through storytelling, participants touch base on their lived experiences providing insight into their upbringing, beliefs and core values where information is shared as a learning tool allowing for thought partnership, trust, and innovative approaches that are valued in real time to address violence, inequity, and systemic barriers. By elevating narratives from those with firsthand knowledge, Voices of Power helps to refreams community challenges — and Understand how different communities' cultures and organizational values can align with each other.
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The central goal of the initiative is to break down stigma, harmful norms, stereotypes, and misinformation that often reshape our reality. By first creating a joyful safe space for vulnerability, healing, honest exchange, the platform builds relational trust across sectors that do not traditionally engage as equal partners. This trust-building process creates the foundation necessary for co-design — where diverse individuals collaboratively develop collective frameworks and action plans aligned around shared values and common ground.
Program Goals
Advance Narrative Change in Public Safety
Shift public discourse around Community Violence Intervention (CVI) by elevating lived experiences, challenging harmful stereotypes, and replacing deficit-based narratives with asset-driven, solution-oriented storytelling.
Elevate Lived Experience as Expertise
Institutionalize storytelling as a form of knowledge-sharing, ensuring individuals directly impacted by violence and systemic inequities help inform policy, practice, and program design.
Identify and Scale Effective Practices
Surface innovative methods and evidence-informed strategies that address systemic barriers and amplify models that demonstrate measurable impact in violence prevention and youth empowerment.
Empower Youth and Emerging Leaders
Provide platforms for young people and rising community leaders to shape conversations, influence solutions, and see themselves as architects of transformation.
Translate Dialogue into Action
Move beyond conversation by documenting insights, generating actionable recommendations, and supporting on-the-ground implementation that advances safer and healthier communities.
Civically Engaged, through our Voices of Power program, hosted a Laced with My Experiences workshop in partnership with Eddie House. Laced with My Experiences is a creative placemaking initiative dedicated to reimagining community safety by empowering and amplifying the voices of youth and young adults (ages 14–21) through storytelling and sneaker art design. This initiative operates in two fundamental ways.
First, it serves as a platform for intentional dialogue aimed at redefining youth culture by intertwining creativity, peer-to-peer learning, knowledge sharing, and the universal appeal of footwear to unite youth from various parts of the city. By understanding and exploring how today’s youth interpret their lived experiences, perceptions, and upbringings in diverse communities of color, this project provides a platform where participants can highlight their talents and challenge these perceptions. By designing sneakers that carry positive, transformative messages, participants inspire a shift in the mindsets of their peers and contribute to a shared sense of purpose within their communities.
Second, the initiative spotlights the power of positivity through sneaker designs that challenge adversarial narratives and foster self-expression. For youth navigating environments where clothing can carry stereotypes or divisive perceptions, Laced with My Experiences provides an opportunity to reframe those narratives. Participants use sneakers as a canvas to share their journeys, emphasizing collaboration and mutual understanding between peers and community partners. This creative process fosters self-awareness while bridging generational and cultural gaps, cultivating an inclusive and harmonious environment that celebrates diverse beliefs, customs, and interests.