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Spoken Word
As a youth at George Washington High and a Richmond Village Beacon Center participant, Mical Asefaw wrote and performed poetry as a form of activism against social injustices and to help her combat the peer pressures she faced on a daily basis. She saw the lack of encouragement from adults at school for youth expression on campus, and made it her goal to come back to Washington High and create a program that would empower youth to speak out about their struggles through the art of spoken word. In 2002, she developed her spoken word program as a program coordinator at the Western Addition Beacon Center, housed at Benjamin Franklin Middle School. The program was originally called Ya Heard (named after a poem she wrote at the age of 16) and served to empower Middle School girls during lunch and all youth between the ages of 14 to 18 after school. Mical conducted and developed Ya Heard for two years before moving on to the Richmond Village Beacon at George Washington H.S. in 2005 and creating a more advanced version of Ya Heard, called Spoken Word.
Currently the Spoken Word program consists of youth poets between the ages of 14 to 18 who've come into their voices, while shaping their own identities and inspiring other youth to pick up the Mic and express their struggles through spoken word. The Spoken Word program has spawned a leadership program, consisting of youth who will continue to make vital decisions over the direction of the program; fulfilling, full circle, the goal she set out as a youth to empower other young people at George Washington H.S.
CONTACT: Ricardo Bonilla
