Youth speaks

This is a very interesting concept, born in California, Bay area.
Founded in 1996 in San Francisco, Youth Speaks is the leading nonprofit presenter of Spoken Word performance, education, and youth development programs in the country. Presenters of local and national youth poetry slams, festivals, reading series, and more, Youth Speaks also offers a comprehensive slate of literary arts education programs during the school day, in the after-school hours, on weekends and evenings, while providing numerous opportunities for youth to be published and heard. All told, Youth Speaks works with 45,000 teens per year in the Bay Area alone, and has helped create partner programs in 47 cities across the United States. By providing free arts education to youth with limited access, their  programs seek to empower young people with opportunities to discover and develop their own voices. They firmly believe that in order to overcome the difficulties of the circumstances within which they are situated, young people must think of their voices as vital tools through which they can process their lives, shape the world around them, and hone their abilities to envision and create long-lasting impact. They challenge youth to find, develop, publicly present, and apply their voices as creators of social change.
-- for Youth Speaks website