Van Driver

 Since 2010, VOICES has co-created innovative programming with their youth and communities. VOICES is a Black led organization founded and ran by a local husband and wife duo with a desire to transform communities of color. All staff and board members are predominantly people of color and are from working-class and diverse backgrounds. Given their identities--as well as their personal, professional, and civic involvements, VOICES leadership has a profound, nuanced understanding of how systemic racism, generational poverty, and gaps in systems of support entrench the challenges their youth and families face. This understanding has led to new VOICES initiatives that aim to change the inequitable systems youth are engaged in, alongside supporting, and growing the youth themselves. VOICES believes that playing a role in systems-level change is the only way to achieve their long-term vision: bringing about the day when every Indianapolis child, family, and community has the tools, resources, and collective capacity they need to lead self-determined lives.