History

SYPP encourages and supports youth-led projects for social change.

Any youth member under age 19 can propose a new project. Once a project passes a vote of SYPP’s board, it becomes an officially sponsored “initiative” of our organization. At SYPP we believe that all young people have ideas and opinions that deserve to be taken seriously and we work to support all positive youth led projects and to help make youth’s voice heard.

Since 1992, over 2,000 young people at SYPP have arranged speaking engagements, held teen forums, met with teachers, administrators and politicians, posted flyers, held phone banks, coordinated conferences, led rallies, organized press conferences and published newspapers and “zines.”

SYPP members are especially proud of the following accomplishments:

• Planned and led five youth conferences on education reform attended by more than 450 young people. Organized students and won acceptance for “Student Input Forms”- teacher evaluations – at a local, public high school.
• Led a youth rally to call for a multicultural curriculum in Seattle’s schools. Led and organized a youth rally protesting a “parental rights” bill passed by the Washington State Legislature. Mobilized more than 250 middle and high school students to rally against “The Becca Bill” which denies rights to homeless youth and runaways.
• Documented hundreds of students who have been sexually harassed in school through a youth-led survey. Publicized the results with a poster campaign and meeting with the schools superintendent to change the sexual harassment policy.
• SYPP successfully opened and operated Seattle’s first Youth Art Gallery in April 2000, the Youth Art Collective brought youth together to bridge art, expression and activism.
• Victory over the Seattle School Board! SYPP fought to get Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States allowed as a teaching text in 11th grade history classes and won!
• SYPP youth designed a long-term campaign to fight the use of the institutionally racist Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) as a graduation requirement. The Education Justice Campaign mobilized over a 1000 students through a variety of creative organizing tactics. The EJC ultimately contributed to the public outcry which led to the postponement of the graduation requirement for the science portion, the cancellation of the math portion, and in 2009 the scrapping of the WASL altogether.