Preparing young people for college and successfully getting them to graduate, apply, and enter institutions of higher learning must start well before high school. Partnering with local schools and non-profit organizations to provide directed mentoring, leadership training, and to empower young people and their families through their own local histories is the aim of GVSU’s Kutsche Office of Local History Youth Leadership Initiative. 

Portrait of a Community: A Collaborative Youth Leadership Project

When most people think about history they imagine only the past. For one dynamic group of young people, though, they are using history to shape their future. Over the past year GVSU's Kutsche Office of Local History (GAAH), Grandville Avenue Arts & Humanities, and the Grand Rapids Public Library have teamed up through GAAH's Cook Library Scholars program to document the history of Grand Rapids' Grandville Avenue community, creating the city's first Latino-focused archive. Made up of 31 K-8th graders from mostly immigrant families, the Cook Library Scholars Program is an after-school opportunity for youth that provides academic support, family engagement opportunities, and teaches leadership skills. An exhibition featuring this unique, interdisciplinary collaboration was unveiled on September 18, 2014 in the Cook Library Center, 1100 Grandville Avenue SW. Teen artists in the Cook Library Center also used materials from this collection to help create a mural envisioning the past, present, and future of Latino Grand Rapids and reflected on their experience at the Eastern Michigan University's Ecojustice and Social Activism Conference in March 2015. Their mural is currently on display at the UICA in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan.