2011 Program Highlights

It's short, colorful, and informative. Click here for a PDF of Youth Communication's 2011 program highlights: awards, testimonials, partnerships, and how we inspired tens of thousands of young people to read, write, and succeed. If you'd like to see more, watch the slideshow below.

What Makes a Great Teacher?

Our teen writers contributed essays to Student Voices: What Makes a Great Teacher?, a new report published by The College Board. The writers describe, in no uncertain terms, the characteristics required to be effective in the classroom.
Read the report

'I Am a Youth Communication Success Story'

In her blog for the New York Nonprofit Press, Janice Tosto, Director of Vocational Services for Greenhope Services for Women says:

"Writing for [Youth Communication's] publications was an amazing, life changing experience for numbers of us in our adolescent years. Youth Communication has truly produced wonderful success stories. I am one of them."

Janice was a writer for the teen magazine New Youth Connections during the 1980s. [more]

Village Voice Raves about NYC

The Village Voice called New Youth Connections (recently renamed YCteen) the "best developer of young city writers" in its annual "best of" issue in October 2010.

One of the wonderful lessons taught by New Youth Connections, the inner-city teen writing program launched back in 1980, is that when you ask kids to write about their everyday lives, they can be both clearer and more eloquent than any professional journalist or academic.

The program's publications have allowed city kids to tell stories on issues ranging from confrontations with cops, the pressures to "stop snitching," sex for the first time, becoming a young mother (or father), and the agonies of foster care. Does it work? Ask Edwidge Danticat, the novelist who got her chops in the program back in 1984 as a teenager and has since won a MacArthur "genius" award (as has NYC founder Keith Hefner); or Ernesto Quiñonez, author of the novel Bodega Dreams, about East Harlem. At New Youth Connections, Quiñonez says, "The word actually meant something and actually spoke to me."

14th Annual Awards for Youth in Foster Care

Write two essays about your foster care experiences and you may win one of 20 cash prizes of $400 - $1,000. You must be nominated by an adult who writes you a letter of recommendation. The deadline to send your essays in is March 1. Click here for more information, including the essay questions.