Mission

Words To Power shows youth the power of their words.

What We Do?

Words To Power conducts highly engaging, culturally relevant, and SEL-focused spoken word poetry workshops for underserved youth in elementary, middle, and high schools in the Denver metro area and throughout Colorado. As an extension of our workshops, we partner with schools to host presentations of youth poetry. Words To Power publishes an annual book of youth poetry with submissions from our workshop participants. We then host a community showcase with contributors, offering them an authentic opportunity for academic excellence, creative expression, and community engagement. Our brochure is below.

Values

Culture: Our ancestors, heritage, and stories cultivated our existence, connecting us to each other, our tierra (land), and barrios. We uphold our responsibility to preserve our heritage and stories alongside our youth, while sustaining a space of shared belonging.

Honor: When we tell our stories through written and spoken word, we honor our culture, our ancestors, and ourselves. We can then carry ourselves with that same sense of honor.

Empowerment: By providing opportunities for authentic empowerment through education, we build and strengthen the leadership and voices of youth.

Community: By centering the voices of youth in our community, we can promote social connection, collective resilience, and self-determination.

Logo

The Words To Power logo draws inspiration from many sources. The overall structure is modeled after a corn plant, as our workshop curriculum uses it as a metaphor. The raised fist reminds us of our power to create change, as social justice movements before us have struggled to achieve. The scrolls on either side pull from Indigenous books in Mexico, as symbols of speech (thus the accompanying image from a codex of people talking to each other). Taken together, our words and power come from our roots.