Teen Leadership Awards

The Westchester Youth Alliance awarded leadership awards for extraordinary commitment to community service, social justice and racial equity to seven local high school students. 

Each student participated throughout the academic year in a monthly dialogue with the Peekskill NAACP Youth Council where they learned about and discussed issues of racism and bias. They attended a WYA screening and panel discussion on Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative, and spoke about their personal experiences of confronting their own implicit biases at multiple webinars about racial unity with national educators, former police officers and Princeton University Professor Rhua Benjamin.

The teens also participated in WYA’s Thanksgiving cooking event at Temple Shaaray Tefila which served over 2,000 free meals to the community, spoke about diversity and understanding at the annual Thanksgiving Interfaith Service, created a gratitude video for health care workers thanking them for their service to the community, which is currently used at Westchester Medical Center and Northern Westchester hospital.