If they were asked, many people would say youth are at the root of our community’s problems. If you ask Marquetta Atkins-Woods, she would say youth are and can be a major part of the cure for what’s wrong with our communities.
Marquetta has spent almost 10 years building up and empowering youth in our community to make positive change in themselves and the community.
Her connection with empowering community youth began in 2015 when she started Destination Innovation and her signature program, Camp Destination Innovation. Camp DI, still in existence, is a summer program designed to expose marginalized youth to various career options, with a strong focus on entrepreneurship and civic engagement.
Over the past nine years, Marquetta has started and grown an array of programs all focused on empowering youth and empowering our community.
The programs have a proven history of making a difference in the community, but 2024 was a spectacular year for Marquetta and her awesome team.
Programs currently operating under the Destination Innovation umbrella are: Camp Destination Innovation, Root the Power, Progeny, and Cure Violence.
Root the Power is a civic engagement and environmental justice program. Using youth interns, participants teach young people and the public about the power of their vote. Youth too young to vote are taught to use their voice as a catalyst for change.
Root the Power sponsors two signature events: Vote Mob and Rock the Block. Rock the Block is a party held in late summer to encourage voter registration and Vote Mob is held just days before the fall elections to encourage people to vote. Both programs target Black and Brown youth and young adults ages 18 to 35.
Both events are led by young people. They include performances and speeches by young adults, music and food.
Progeny focuses on reimagining the juvenile justice system and reinvesting in community-based alternatives. The program aims to transform the juvenile justice system in Kansas by closing the remaining state youth prison and shifting power to the communities most impacted by these systems.
In 2016, Kansas passed a law that promised positive reforms to the state’s juvenile justice systems and Progeny has been there all along, working to ensure the changes made deliver as promised.
Based on their experience and advocacy in the area of juvenile justice, this year the Washington, D.C.-based Gault Center reached out to Progeny to assist on their contract with the State of Kansas to train public defenders on how to equitably defend youth.
Progeny’s mission is directly aligned with the Gault Center, a national nonprofit dedicated to promoting justice for all children by ensuring excellence in youth defense.
This year Progny sponsored a Youth Justice Symposium and, at their request, Gov. Laura Kelly proclaimed November as Youth Justice in Action Month. The symposium brought together youth and individuals with the power to make change to discuss the changes youth participants would like to see in schools and in the city and state’s justice system.
Cure Violence is a new DI program that the team spent most of the year standing up. Cure Violence is a program under an agreement with the City of Wichita designed to help reduce gun violence. The program is based on an effective model that’s being implemented in cities across the country.
The focus of the program is to work in the community to stop violence before it occurs.
Using violence interrupters, people hired for their ability to relate to and build authentic relationships with individuals who might become involved in violent activities, the program goes where those most at risk are.
Up and officially operating since September, already In its first three months, the program has successfully mediated five potential gun violence incidents, defused three fights before they escalated, and connected 61 families to vital services.
The good news for Wichita is DI’s Cure Violence and its team of 13 on-the-street workers has been extended through June 2026.
“The most powerful thing I can say about Cure Violence is that their work will not make the news,” said Marquetta, “and that’s because they’re preventing gun violence.”
A lot of the violence interrupters are younger adults who used to be involved on the “other side.” Now, they’re fathers, grandfathers, business owners and community activists.
“They don’t want kids going through what they went through,” says Marquetta, “and who better to reach the kids that we typically can’t reach than people who were once those kids.”
Marquetta recognizes the Person of the Year honor is for her, but she says she couldn’t have done it without her team.
“They’re doing transformative work and I’m super proud of them”.
