NEXT GENERATION'S VISION
We continue the sacred work of ensuring that the voices and stories of the next generation—the true inheritors of humanity—are upheld, narrated, and transmuted, to bring them into the future.
NEXT GENERATION'S MISSION
In continuing to expand Yaffa's impact, we seek to build off of Yaffa traditions to create community development programs, initiatives, and networks with the expressed aim of connecting young people to necessary information and resources, critical networks and community, education, and a space to express ourselves via art and storytelling.
Yaffa Next Gen aims to create a space for young people to come together to imagine and realize a future amidst uncertainty.
NEXT GENERATION YAFFA CO-CHAIRS
Malik Monteith
Myrwaldy Lucien
Destini DaCosta
Malik Monteith is a writer, poet, dancer, ancestral archivist and Co Chair of Next Generation Yaffa, operating as Relations Specialist. He is an undergraduate student at John Jay, currently working on his degree in Sociology as well as a Certificate in Dispute Resolution. He is seeking to utilize these skills and future training to help construct and maintain systems of care infrastructure.
Much of his work, now and into the future, is focused on drawing on both written and academic traditions as well as drawing on ancestral knowledge bound within oral traditions to help organize ways that we can better relate to one another interpersonally, in community, and cross communally.
Myrwaldy Lucien is a graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where she earned her B.S. in Human Services and Community Justice. As a former McNair Scholar, her research focused on the experiences of Black men and systemic inequities.
She now works as an educator, dedicated to empowering youth and supporting communities through advocacy, resilience-building, and meaningful engagement. Beyond her professional role, Myrwaldy is committed to mentorship and community organizing.
Her work sits at the intersection of community, justice, and healing. Whether mentoring, organizing, or conducting research, she is guided by the belief that real change requires both accountability and care. She plans to attend law school and build a career that bridges legal advocacy with community-based support while remaining rooted in the communities she serves.
Destini DaCosta is a poet, writer, researcher, and Co-Chair of Next Generation Yaffa, operating as the Governance Strategy Coordinator. Her research moves across the history of human existence—from the social architecture that preceded written law, through the construction of society and empires, through the long record of how power, belief, and art have shaped what is permitted to exist in a given society. Her question, underneath all of it, is one of origin: what creates the conditions in which something genuinely new becomes possible—and who controls those conditions? That question lives in her poetry as her writing and her research are expressions of the same inquiry.
OUR TEAM