The Changemakers is a year-long program that provides a cohort of young Latina women from Ossining, Tarrytown, and Peekskill School Districts with a bi-lingual, all-woman led leadership development, outdoor education and civic engagement program for rising seniors.

The 5 components of the year-long program include:

• The Changemakers begins with pre-trip spring orientation meeting to prepare students and families for the summer adventure and to introduce the fundamentals of positive social change and effective leadership development.

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• During the summer, students participate in a weeklong adventure into the true wilderness, including a four-day river trip through the Gates of Lodore on Utah's Green River -- one of our country’s most awe-inspiring and remote natural treasures. This journey delivers rare moments of peace to reflect on their lives through intentional conversations, journal writing and the creative story arts of film and photography to help them discover new ways to become authors of their own life story. All of this leads to expanding their belief systems about what is possible - and how they might be a  creative force for positive change. The participants also learn the physical and mental health benefits of time in nature, away from the distractions of our busy lives -- a story we help them bring home to communities who often feel (and have been) excluded from the outdoors.

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• During the ensuing school year, students then focus on how to transform their leadership gifts into positive social action. In September, students attend a full day Young Women’s Leadership Summit on the Manhattanville University campus where they are guided through the process of operationalizing their ‘why’ into an action plan for positive change. Over the course of the school year, students are then supported by advisors in their efforts to implement this plan.

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• In early December, students participate in a public exhibition to introduce their social action plan for change at a community reception intended to elevate their voices in front or local educators, families and their peers.

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• As a final step, the following April the students participate in the Ethel Kennedy Young women’s Leadership Summit Exhibition, cosponsored by the Manhattanville University doctoral program and Kennedy Human Rights, to share their social change projects.

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In the end, the Changemakers program aims to nurture and develop leadership skills within the Latina community and increase civic engagement by providing high-potential young women with the confidence, tools, and inspiration to be exemplars that help empower others to become more engaged in their community, to become stewards of our natural world thereby creating a better world for all of us.​

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Below is a short recap film from a recent Changemakers summer adventure.