Youth Voices is a Youth Participatory-Based Research (YPAR) program hosted at the UNP Hartland Partnership Center. Since 2016, Youth Voices was developed to increase educational opportunities for young people on the Southwest side of Salt Lake county. In order to fulfill this goal, Youth Voices engages youth through art, research, and prosocial activities. Youth Voices places young people’s expertise at the center of knowledge production in a space (the University) often perceived as unwelcoming to minoritized populations.
In partnership with faculty and staff from multiple departments, in the pursuit of this work has also emerged what we’re calling Hartland Scholars. Hartland Scholars is an early-college credit program, centering the youth, values, and experiences of the community we work with, while challenging the expectations and barriers that exist in other early admissions programs.
Visit https://youthvoicesutah.com to learn more and check out their projects, like the Youth Voices podcast, which explores who makes decisions about what youth learn in school.
