GSFLompoc VOICE Initiative

Valuing Our Identity, Community, and Education

A 12-session curriculum that helps young people name what they know, listen to each other, and say it out loud.

12 sessions, 60 to 75 minutes Grounded in Lompoc Ends in a youth-led project

What It Is

Young people carry more than school usually asks for.

VOICE is a youth engagement framework and 12-session curriculum. It helps students reflect on who they are, recognize the strengths they already carry, understand the communities that shaped them, and build the confidence to share their stories, questions and ideas.

Plenty of young people hold insight, creativity, cultural knowledge and leadership potential that a traditional classroom never gets around to measuring. VOICE starts from the belief that those strengths matter. It helps youth name what they know, listen to others, ask harder questions, and consider how their experience shapes the way they move through school and life.

It is built for classrooms, advisory periods, after-school programs, mentorship programs and community learning spaces. It is locally grounded by design: Lompoc sources, places, stories and issues run through the sessions, so broad themes land somewhere students actually recognize.

The Framework

Five pillars, running through all twelve sessions.

A session may open on identity and lead into community. A conversation about local history can open space for belonging, voice and purpose.

Belonging

Building trust and peer connection, so the group is a space where their stories and perspectives matter.

Identity

Examining who they are, what shaped them, and the strengths they bring from family, culture and neighborhood.

Community

Connecting to the local history, culture, institutions and stories of the places they call home.

Voice

Practicing reflection, storytelling, self-advocacy and the confidence to express themselves.

Purpose

Connecting what they learn about themselves and their community to their goals and their contribution.

How A Session Runs

Structured without being scripted.

Facilitators follow the purpose of each session while making their own calls on pacing, depth and which local material fits.

Theme and guiding question

Each session opens on a central theme and an open-ended question that invites students to think critically and bring their own perspective.

Supporting local material

A local source, story, place or issue gives students a concrete way in and ties the question to real places and experiences.

Engagement and activity

Discussion, personal reflection, community mapping, storytelling, role-play, music, art or creative response, pitched so everyone can take part.

Reflection and creative response

Journaling, drawing, poetry, collage, mapping or storytelling. The form shifts with the session and the group.

Youth voice and project connection

Each session feeds the culminating project, helping students notice the questions and stories that matter to them.

The Curriculum

Twelve sessions, twelve questions.

No.	Session	Guiding question
1	Program welcome and cohort identity	What kind of space do we want to build together?
2	Identity and personal assets	Who am I? What strengths, interests and experiences shape me?
3	Community assets and barriers	What strengths and barriers do we see in our community, and what would we change?
4	Lompoc then and now	How have Lompoc and our school changed over time?
5	Lompoc's cultural history, part one	Who has shaped Lompoc, and what can their experiences teach us?
6	Lompoc's cultural history, part two	How have culture, migration and struggle shaped life in Lompoc?
7	Student voice and local decision making	How can students use their voice to shape the school and community?
8	Punitive versus opportunity	How can different responses change what happens next?
9	Social movements and local struggle	How have people used their voices to resist and create change?
10	Music and meaning	How can music express identity, struggle, resistance and hope?
11	Art, struggle and community	How can art tell stories and become a form of expression or resistance?
12	Learning from and with the community	What can we share, celebrate and learn from one another?

The Culminating Project

Youth-led. Locally grounded. Purposeful.

It grows out of the questions and stories students surface along the way. The facilitator guides the process without deciding it. The format matters less than the ownership.

Presentation or youth panel Exhibit or gallery Short film, digital story or awareness campaign Zine, booklet or creative publication Spoken word or performance Community recommendation or proposal Student-led cultural event Mural or community art wall

What Changes

What we expect youth to walk out with.

Strengthen their sense of belonging and connection to community, school, peers and supportive adults.
Recognize personal, cultural, family and community knowledge as sources of strength.
Increase their knowledge of local history and the forces that shaped the places they call home.
Develop confidence in expressing perspectives, asking questions and advocating for themselves.
Build a stronger sense of purpose, connecting what they learn to their choices and contribution.

Measured with a pre- and post-program assessment, alongside youth reflections, facilitator observations and partner feedback. Success is judged against the whole set of outcomes rather than any single number, and what the assessments show feeds back into the next cycle.

Get Involved

Bring VOICE to your students.

Whether you are a student who wants in, an educator who wants to run the curriculum with a cohort, or someone who wants to help facilitate, leave your email and the team will follow up.

Word when the next cohort is forming, and how to take part. Unsubscribe in a click.

Locally Rooted

Grounded in research, and in Lompoc.

Victor DeAlba, Ph.D.

Developer of the VOICE Initiative

A proud Lompoc High School graduate and first-generation college student, Victor DeAlba's experiences growing up on the Central Coast shaped his commitment to education and community. Supported by his family and community, he began his higher education journey at Allan Hancock College, earning an associate degree in Sociology before transferring to UCLA. He later earned his Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from The Pennsylvania State University.

VOICE reflects his own path, his research, and his work with young people. The framework draws on his dissertation research into student belonging and transformative educational spaces, alongside scholarship from Yosso, Valenzuela, Freire, hooks, Ladson-Billings, Rios, Cook-Sather and others on cultural wealth, student voice and youth-adult partnership.

VOICE was developed through Central Coast Knowledge Institute, an independent research, education consulting and community engagement organization based in Lompoc. The Lompoc VOICE Initiative is implemented as a program of the Gamma Scholar Foundation.

Also On The Central Coast

The open program alongside it.

Companion program

Central Coast Scholars

The umbrella program: educational opportunities, mentorship and community engagement for high school and college students across the Central Coast. VOICE is one of its two initiatives.

See the program

Support It

The Gamma Scholar Foundation brings people and resources together to advance education, cultivate leadership, and strengthen the communities we serve. Our commitment is simple: turn shared knowledge and resources into meaningful action.

Twelve sessions, one cohort at a time.

Tax deductible, and it funds facilitation, materials and the culminating project for a group of Lompoc youth.

Fund Lompoc VOICE Run VOICE with your students