The mission of Youth Arts New York has always been to engage youth, whether in learning about one another’s cultures through literature or applied arts, or through hearing the stories of people who have endured hardships and discovering how they transformed those hardships into the power to do good. Our Workshops in Civic Engagement do just that. They employ a concept developed by Joanna Macy of the “tantric flip”, the turning of sorrow into joy through active engagement for positive, non-violent change. The workshops begin with storytelling and informative plenaries, then break into talking circles where everyone speaks, is witnessed and is in some small or large way transformed. In the afternoon they take what they have learned about our collective caring and act upon it through applied arts like decorating and writing postcards or making posters that express an idea about an issue that is important to them.