The mission of Texas Youth Word Collective (TYWC), a nonprofit youth literacy program, is to encourage middle school and high school students’ interest in writing through youth poetry slams, open mics and online anthologies. We do this by creating:
- • VENUES—Conducting city-wide poetry slams and open mics for students throughout the area to compete and communicate issues important to youth
- • OUTREACH—Providing demonstrations by poets in the local community to assemblies of students in middle schools and high schools
- • EXCHANGE—Sponsoring a team of young people to travel to, and participate in, the Brave New Voices National Youth Poetry Festival and Slam
- • SHARING—Creating an online poetry anthology for students to publish their poetry for their peers and to submit their work for possible publication in the Austin International Poetry Festival Youth Anthology.
Additionally, the Texas Youth Word Collective is active in youth advocacy through its membership in the Texas Coalition Advocating Justice for Juvenile (TCAJJ), a reform coalition designed to help end abuse and mistreatment of incarcerated youth in the juvenile justice system.