LATIN AMERICAN YOUTH CENTER
About Our Partner
The Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) is a DC-based nonprofit organization that offers a variety of programming to low-income youth of all backgrounds. Their mission is to empower a diverse population of youth to achieve a successful transition to adulthood, through multi-cultural, comprehensive, and innovative programs that address youths’ social, academic, and career needs.
Since their founding in the late 1960s, LAYC has grown from a small grassroots recreation center to a nationally recognized agency serving all low-income youth. Each year, LAYC serves over 4,000 youth and families through youth centers, school-based sites, and public charter schools in the District of Columbia and Maryland’s Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties.
About Our Project
During the summer of 2017, Shout Mouse Press held a month-long workshop with LAYC's Latino Youth Leadership Council (LYLC), a passionate group of young people dedicated to social justice in their community. The workshop, led by a team of teaching artists with experience devising and illustrating comic books, will result in a graphic memoir collection by Latinx youth that inspires, motivates, and educates its readers, and that changes the narrative about America's immigrants.
This project is timely, ambitious, and a much-needed addition to current national discussions about who we are as a country. We are so proud and excited. Stay tuned! Scheduled for release early 2018.
We would like to thank the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for generously supporting this project.
The first week working on the LAYC graphic memoir project was a whirlwind of emotion. Coming in the first day, I was surrounded by nervous teenagers speaking Spanish. I realized that the language obstacles we were tackling were more pronounced than I had expected.