It’s been quite a year for us! We have navigated huge organizational transitions, provided support to grassroots leaders across the country, and organized a national Forum focused on strategic planning – all in the midst of a political climate that poses huge threats to the movement for youth justice and decriminalization.
Here are some of the things that happened at NYJN this year:
- Our 2025 Youth Justice Leadership Institute (YJLI) fellows experienced a year of growth, connection and transformation.
- We started off the year in Washington, DC where we delved into our advocacy lineages, set goals to align with our vision for the youth justice movement, and met with on-the-ground advocates at Restorative Arlington to learn about their efforts to create community-held responses to harm.
- Throughout the year fellows learned somatic skills, practiced Emergent Strategies, and connected with alumni about how to integrate new skills into their work.
- We held our end of fellowship retreat in Montgomery, Alabama where we explored Freedom Farm Azul, The Co-Lab, the Equal Justice Legacy Museum, and the More Up Campus to support the integration of lessons from Black Southern organizing tradition as the roots of the work we do now.
- The impact of our YJLI fellowship has been immediate. Four of the ten fellows have started new values-aligned roles after graduating and all of the fellows are currently facilitating youth-centered advocacy projects.
- All YJLI alumni had an opportunity to connect at our YJLI Reunion in October! 2025 fellows met other alumni, received guidance from YJLI founder Ms. Diana Onley-Campbell, and practiced healing justice through music-making and reflection with Dr. Ram Baghat of Drums No Guns.
- Fallon J. Speaker, Esq, joined NYJN as our new Executive Director and our former Executive Director Tracey Tucker transitioned out. We deeply appreciate Tracey for all of her support and leadership and wish her the best in her next chapter!
- In August we welcomed Lucid Parks as our new Communications & Narrative Change Manager and Melissa Coretz Goemann transitioned out of her position as Senior Policy Council. We are very excited to have Lucid on board, and although we miss Melissa we were happy to honor her with our Legacy Award at our Annual Forum.
- In May we organized a webinar, “How States Are Building a Continuum of Care to Help Young People Thrive,” to promote the federal Coordinating Council’s Continuum of Care reports.
- We issued 5 mini grants to member organizations to publicize and spread awareness about the findings and recommendations of the reports. This was possible due to the support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
- The John Oliver Show consulted with us for their piece on juvenile justice reform, part of which discussed the issue of minimum age of delinquency and showed one of our maps indicating which states have minimum age laws.
- We have continued our research and technical assistance advocacy for members and partners in the field, including:
- Support to members in Nebraska to fight a bad bill that would lead to increased detention of youth
- Helping members in New Jersey edit factsheets on transfer
- Drafting a letter, at the request of members, to legislators in Illinois in support of a detention reform bill
- Drafting written testimony, at the request of members, to the Massachusetts legislative committee in support of limiting suspensions and expulsions based solely on juvenile court involvement
- Providing members in Ohio and Oklahoma with resources and expert suggestions for their raise the minimum age campaign
- Continuing to attend and provide support to members in the Maryland Youth Justice Coalition
- In October we held our 2025 Annual Forum, Rising in the Moment: From Communication to Implementation! Around 100 advocates joined us from across the country to learn, strategize, and build community. You can read more about Forum here.
- We spent December engaging in strategic planning so that we can build on the success of our 2025 Forum and grow to provide deeper support to our members and a unified strategy for the youth justice movement in 2026.
As we approach the end of the year, any donations we receive will help strengthen our work and the fight for youth justice in the coming year. You can donate here!
Thank you for supporting our work! We couldn’t have done any of this without the support of our amazing community. The threats we face are big, but our community of people fighting for justice for our young people is stronger.