Welcome to Crossing Barriers!

At CrossingBarriers we believe that through youth empowerment and issue-based organizing, young people can develop the skills necessary to address the institutional challenges they face and produce systemic change within their own communities. Thank you for visiting our website! Please use the navigation links above to explore CrossingBarriers.org

Who We Are at CrossingBarriers?

At Crossing Barriers we develop the leadership skills of immigrant youth and activists to produce systemic changes in educational and other systems.

We provide leadership development training through issue-based community organizing. We focus our projects based on the needs and challenges facing immigrant communities, especially addressing the systemic barriers immigrants face in their educational systems and other systems that affect the youth. Our leadership training provides immigrant youth and activists with the tools they need in order to succeed in their schools, better their communities and achieve their goals.

We work with low income students, youth and community activists in Minneapolis, St. Paul and surrounding counties in Minnesota. We help empower these students and their families in projects committed to contributing positively to the long term stability and success of their community and education. We also address immediate issues that affect communities through an issues-based community organizing approach which is led by the students and activists. The leadership skills learned here have been empowering for our youth leaders and activists. Our training sessions have helped students achieve their educational and career goals successfully.

The foundation and backbone of CrossingBarriers is its community support of student volunteers and activists. Each program we have is directed by and for the needs of its participants. Participants tell us what issues and challenges face their communities, and CrossingBarriers provides leadership training in order that participants can more effectively advocate and engage in projects.