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Making Some Noise

Amy Averett’s student-centered nonprofit shows Texas youth how to raise their voices

By Reid Pillafant

In April 2006, school board candidates in Austin, Tex., gathered at a local community college to face some of their toughest constituents. But it wasn’t PTA moms who packed the auditorium that night. Rather, the candidates fielded questions from 40 high school students in an open forum organized by the student members of Austin Voices for Education and Youth.

One student pressed the candidates to explain their stances on sex education. “It was a very different thing being asked about it by a teen parent who had to transfer from a school with a lot of AP classes to an alternative one that doesn’t have them just because that school has child care,” recalls Austin Voices Executive Director Amy Averett (E. North Carolina ’91).

At the end of the night, one candidate told Averett that the students’ questions were the most insightful and thought-provoking of the entire campaign. “I just knew that we had really nailed it,” Averett says. “Part of what we wanted to accomplish was for the candidates to have a good experience dealing with students and listening to them directly.”

Empowering young people to be their own advocates is at the heart of the mission of Austin Voices, a nonprofit Averett founded in 2003 that mobilizes students to strengthen local schools and communities. At the time, “there was really no work going on to engage young people in the process of improving schools,” says Averett, who holds degrees in community organizing and public administration from the University of Pittsburgh.

“When I was in Teach For America,” she says, “it was an organization founded by young 20-year-olds, and was being run by young 20-year-olds. That gave me a sense that ‘Of course I can go start a nonprofit and start a social movement.’ ”

Today, Austin Voices sponsors a series of community conversations about education and offers five youth engagement initiatives. One of the core programs is Youth Action for Educational Change, a class offered at Garza High School in east Austin. Students accepted to the program meet three days a week and receive credit for completing a curriculum focused on developing community organizing skills, studying historical civil rights movements, and planning social action projects like last year’s school board forum.

The class’ other projects include a pamphlet and public service announcement educating voters on school bond issues and a photo exhibit highlighting the inequity of resources between schools in east and west Austin. Getting young people involved helps them see themselves in the bigger picture, says Averett: “It makes them feel like they have a role to play.”

Since 2006, Austin Voices has received $275,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create spin-offs of the Garza program—called Stand Up Clubs—at five other high schools.

Averett’s nonprofit is also leading a coalition of youth organizations in the formation of a citywide youth council to serve as a sounding board for the school board and superintendent. Endorsed by the mayor, the council will have 22 members, including one student representative from each high school in the Austin Independent School District.

“Our hope is that it’s going to result in policies and programs that respond to real needs young people in our community have—not just what we think they need,” Averett says.

Angelo McHorse, 18, a recent Garza graduate, says Austin Voices has had a profound impact on his personal outlook. “It has shown me the power of social movements and how they affect masses of people and how they’ve affected our country,” he says. “I want to plant seeds in places and show students they have the ability to change things.”