Voice & Vision: Where South Bay Students Go From Participants to Leaders
There is no shortage of potential in San Diego's South Bay. Walk into any classroom at San Ysidro, Mar Vista, or Sweetwater High School and you will find students who are curious, creative, and driven – students who want to contribute to something larger than themselves. What they often lack is not ambition. It is access: to mentors who look like them, to civic spaces that center their voices, to the kinds of enriching, skill-building experiences that students in more affluent communities take for granted.
Voice & Vision exists to close that gap.
What Voice & Vision Is
Voice & Vision is a signature program of Teens Rise Foundation, whose proven youth leadership model transforms low-income, first-generation Latinx students into the next generation of artists, innovators, and civic leaders. Delivered across a full academic year at San Ysidro, Mar Vista, and Sweetwater High Schools, Voice & Vision serves 250 students who do not just learn about leadership; they practice it in the settings that matter most to them, building confidence and social capital that extends far beyond the program.
The program develops students as whole people, equipping them to express themselves creatively, investigate the world scientifically, engage their communities civically, and sustain themselves and others through mindful leadership. Leadership development is age-appropriate and contextually relevant because it meets students where they are – in their schools, their neighborhoods, and their identities. Curricula are co-designed with student and community input, and the progression from participant to planner to leader is built intentionally across the program year.
In Voice & Vision, youth are not recipients of adult-designed projects. They are the artists, researchers, advocates, and teachers who identify community issues, shape their responses, and lead implementation.
How It Works
The program is structured in three phases.
It begins with a kick-off Youth Empowerment Summit (YES), a full-day experience designed to build belonging and spark curiosity. At the kick-off YES, 150 juniors and seniors explore four self-development pathways through immersive introductory workshops: a cultural arts session, a STEM career panel, a civic leadership keynote, and a mindfulness and wellness workshop. After the summit, each student selects one of the four pathways for year-long engagement.
Throughout the academic year, each pathway cohort engages in monthly workshops with Latinx professionals and community leaders – artists, STEM professionals, civic figures, and wellness experts – who mentor students as they design and lead real-world action projects. All programming is delivered on school campuses at no cost to students or families, removing the financial and transportation barriers that most limit participation. Bilingual staff provide culturally responsive support throughout.
The program concludes with an end-of-year Youth Empowerment Summit planned and executed entirely by students, bringing all 150 pathway participants together with an additional 100 freshmen and sophomores and ensuring the leadership pipeline extends to the next cohort.
The Four Pathways
Roots & Blossoms: Arts & Cultural Expression
For first-generation students navigating complex identities and experiences, creative expression is not just an outlet: it is a tool for healing, self-discovery, personal growth, and storytelling. Students engage in monthly guided art sessions with local artists and school art teachers, developing original artwork and artists' statements that explore themes of heritage, resilience, and aspiration. By moving through a sustained creative process – from blank canvas to finished piece to public presentation – students build the artistic confidence, cultural pride, and communication skills that serve them in college, career, and community.
The pathway culminates in a public student art exhibition at the Japanese Friendship Garden & Museum in Balboa Park, where students present their work to peers, families, and community stakeholders, demonstrating that their stories and perspectives deserve to be seen and celebrated.
Success looks like students owning their story at a public exhibition.
STEMBridge Scholars: STEM Mentorship & Career Exploration
The gap in Latinx representation among STEM professionals begins upstream, with limited exposure and the absence of relatable role models that prevent Latinx youth from ever seeing themselves in STEM careers. STEMBridge Scholars directly addresses these gaps by pairing students with Latinx STEM professionals for monthly mentorship meetings, activity-based STEM exploration, and guided exploration of STEM career pathways.
This pathway asks students to do something transformative: identify a specific area of research interest within STEM and articulate their personal "why" – why this field, why this problem, why them. This process of inquiry and self-authorship is foundational to college readiness, because students who arrive at college with a defined intellectual curiosity are more likely to persist, excel, and ultimately contribute meaningfully to their fields.
The pathway culminates in a STEM field trip where students present their research interest and personal connection to a panel of STEM professionals, building the technical confidence and scientific identity needed to pursue STEM in college and beyond.
Success looks like a student who arrived without a STEM identity leaving with a defined research interest and the confidence to pursue it.
Changemakers: Civic Engagement & Community Leadership
First-generation youth are underrepresented not only in STEM but also in the civic spaces where decisions about their communities are made. Changemakers is built on two fundamental beliefs: that civic engagement is a skill that must be modeled, taught, and practiced – and that young people from South County San Diego have vital perspectives that government and community institutions need to hear.
Students engage with civic, nonprofit, and public sector leaders through monthly mentorship sessions and structured conversations about community leadership, systemic barriers, and the levers of change available to them. The pathway culminates in a field trip to local government offices and participation in a public comment session, giving students direct, real-world experience exercising their civic voice.
In a community where youth voices are rarely centered in public discourse, this experience is both practically empowering and deeply affirming.
Success looks like students' words entering the public record.
Mindful Leaders: Health, Wellness & Peer Leadership
The ability to regulate emotions, manage stress, and support others is not just a soft skill; it is a foundational competency for leadership in any field. Students complete a 15-week Mindful Leaders Certification program, developing self-awareness, emotional regulation, stress management, and peer leadership skills through guided mindful movement, breathwork, journaling, and collaborative reflection.
But what makes this pathway truly distinctive is its multiplier effect. Upon certification, Mindful Leaders design and lead wellness workshops for younger students, creating a peer leadership pipeline that extends the program's impact far beyond its direct participants. Students who begin as learners become teachers and, in doing so, internalize leadership in its most meaningful form: the capacity to care for and uplift others.
Success looks like younger students equipped with wellness tools, taught by someone who looks like them.
The End-of-Year Summit: Where It All Comes Together
After the youth action project presentations for all four pathways, a peer-selected student planning committee takes over. They design and lead the end-of-year Youth Empowerment Summit, showcasing the work of all 150 pathway students to an audience that includes 100 freshmen and sophomores. By watching older peers exhibit artwork, discuss research, champion civic leadership, and teach wellness, younger students see their own future potential reflected back at them. Older students step forward as the leaders they have become.
This is how Voice & Vision sustains itself: each cohort of leaders becomes the inspiration for the next.
Why Voice & Vision Matters
The four pathways of Voice & Vision each respond to a documented gap. In the arts, students in low-income schools have significantly less access to arts education than peers in more affluent communities. In STEM, Latinx students make up just 8% of the workforce despite representing 17% of workers across all fields. In civic life, fewer than 16% of youth have access to meaningful leadership development opportunities by age 25. And in wellness, Latinx youth face among the highest rates of mental health challenges among all youth, challenges that contribute directly to absenteeism and disengagement in local schools.
Behind every one of these statistics is a student growing up in a community where only 10% of adults hold college degrees – where there is no roadmap at home for a life defined by education, professional fulfillment, civic participation, and well-being.
Voice & Vision exists to build that roadmap. And to ensure that the absence of one at home never determines what a student believes is possible.
The Results
Teens Rise Foundation has been building that roadmap for eight years. The outcomes reflect both the urgency of the work and its effectiveness:
100% of TRF seniors graduate meeting California's a-g college admission requirements, compared to 56% of San Diego high school seniors
99% enroll in 4-year universities
77% graduate from college — seven times the national average for low-income, first-generation students
Students report a 40% increase in knowledge of STEM career pathways and a 200% increase in interest in STEM careers
Students participating in TRF wellness programming report a 25% decrease in depressive symptoms, a 19% increase in motivation, and a 12% increase in confidence
100% of students report increased engagement with their cultural identity and expression
What We Believe
The students of South County San Diego are not lacking in talent, creativity, or ambition. What they lack is access. Voice & Vision changes that.
Through Voice & Vision, South County youth are no longer excluded from the spaces where their futures are being shaped. They shape those futures themselves.