Specifications include, but are not limited to: Contractor shall work with the County of San Diego Office of Equity and Racial Justice to develop and implement a Youth Leadership Academy to train youth aged 14-19 to promote positive human relations among their peers and develop the skills needed to steward anti-bias, anti-bigotry, and anti-racism in their communities and promote healing, resiliency, and positivity across the county. The innovative program shall be a youth-led education and prevention program dedicated to celebrating diversity, challenging oppressive social norms, promoting leadership, and inspiring youth to ultimately end all forms of violence within their communities. The cohort will consist of youth impacted by bias, bigotry, and racism, along with youth from impacted communities, and from junior/middle and high schools across the county, for two years. In order to maximize the training and support provided, the cohort is limited to 25 youth. Upon graduating from high school or receiving a high school diploma and or GED, those youth also graduate from the leadership academy and, if they choose, can become a youth mentor(s) within the academy and will also be recognized as an ambassador for the academy. Contractor will also work with County staff (Including OERJ, Probation, Child Welfare Services, Behavioral Health Services) and the Leon Williams Human Relations Commission’s Youth Subcommittee to develop and implement an Incident Response Team program and strategy to deploy contractor staff and respond to youth-related incidents of bias, bigotry, and racism inclusive of different forms of identity/intersectionality to provide trauma-responsive support to the victim/s. If the incident is not criminal in behavior, the contractor will work with the harm doer through an educational process of dismantling racism/white supremacy, bigotry, and bias.
