Equipping Leaders

YWCA Monterey County empowers girls and women as leaders every day. We provide on-the-ground training to license adults as Domestic Violence Advocates. Check out events for more information on our next Advocate cohort!

Our collaborations with school districts and initiatives such as Girl’s Health in Girl’s Hands, and Girls, Inc. (to name a few) provide youth empowerment through mentorship, healthy relationship modeling, healthy femininity, gender, and masculinity, professional skill development, healthy self-image, alliance building, and self-confidence.

In schools, we facilitate violence prevention and community development studies. In 2017-18 the Youth Education and Prevention program (YEA) served 100 youth in all school year-long classes on community development, violence prevention, and abuse and healthy relationship curricula.

Another point of preventative advocacy is our youth leadership teams. Each youth cohort present on abuse and healthy relationship in schools, churches, and events, across the county. In Soledad, we have built local government participation in violence prevention work through the California Close 2 Home project.

As important as it is to develop leadership in girls, we believe it is equally critical to develop boys as upstanders for healthy interpersonal relationships. For that reason, the Close 2 Home project provides an all-gender platform for violence prevention leadership.

Finally, In Soledad, this work has gotten the attention of the City Council. Today a Youth Council is in formation. We hope to build a local government platform for youth-led initiatives to prevent and intervene in domestic violence, and empower girls and women to lead lives free of violence.

“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” Audre Lorde