Mission Statement
Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS) is a social justice movement that empowers youth and transforms education by creating platforms for critical literacy, access to higher education, youth voice and civic engagement. SAYS elevates the voices of students as the authors of their own lives and agents of change.
Our Guiding Principles
Empowering Students:
Young people have the potential to be the authors of their own lives and agents of change. At SAYS, we activate young people to read, write, and speak about their lives through the medium of spoken word performance poetry. Through this unique process, literacy and leadership go hand-in-hand as young people pick up the mic and the pen.
Empowering Educators:
We support the whole classroom so that each person excels socially, culturally, emotionally and academically. We know that just as the best teaching empowers students, the best professional development empowers teachers. SAYS offers innovative professional development for staff that is culturally relevant and hands-on. Teachers gain important skills that will help them bring community-based literacies into the curriculum in critical ways.
Empowering Families:
SAYS engages in a wrap-around mentoring model that supports the success of the whole family. We specialize in helping adults navigate the school system, providing them with effective strategies to advocate and support the academic and lifelong health of their children.
SAYS Seven Pillars
1.) Our Write to live; Our write to heal.
2.) School is my hustle
3.) If you got something to say, SAYSomething!
4.) The pedagogy of love.
5.) Youth is the truth.
6.) It’s not a crime to be who you are.
7.) Even if all we have is this poetry let it be enough to swim thought this poverty!
Partnerships — Past and Present
School Districts
Davis Joint Unified School District
Glendale Unified School District
Oakland Unified School District
Sacramento City Unified School District
Sonoma County Office of Education
Stockton Unified School District
Twin Rivers Unified School District
Vallejo Unified School District
Woodland Joint Unified School District
Yolo County Office of Education
Foundations
Sierra Health Foundation
Stuart Foundation
The California Endowment
The Wellness Foundation
UMOJA Community Foundation
Businesses and Non-Profits
AT&T
California Postsecondary Education Commission
Pepsi
Youth Speaks, Inc.
SAYS Staff and Structure
Patrice Hill
SAYS Director
Denisha “Coco” Bland
SAYS Associate Director
Brian T Green
SAYS Poet-Mentor Educator
SAYS National Advisory Board and Key Supporters
Dr. Vajra Waston
SAYS Founder, Faculty Director Doctorate in Educational Leadership, Associate Professor, Sacramento State | College of Education
Jeanette Providence
Grant Union High School Teacher
Linda Christensen
Director, Oregon Writing Project,
Lewis & Clark College
Editor: Rethinking Schools
Hodari Davis
Ph.D. Student at UC Davis
Founder, Edutainment for Equity
Former National Director of Youth Speaks, Inc.
Dr. Halifu Osumare
Professor Emerita, African American and African Studies, UC Davis
Dr. Pedro Noguera
Distinguished Professor of Education,
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA
Willie Ney
Executive Director and Founder
Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives and First Wave Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings
Professor Emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison, President, National Academy of Education
Dr. Maisha Winn
Chancellor's Leadership Professor, School of Education, Faculty Director and Co-Founder, Transformative Justice in Education (TJE) Center, UC Davis
Cassandra Jennings
President and CEO, Greater Sacramento Urban League
Marlene Bell
Retired, California Teachers Association
UC Davis Alumni
Charday Alcaraz, M.Ed.
SAYS Alumni, President of SAYS Alumni Collective