SYNC (Shakti Youth Network for Change) Book / Publication / Landmark Writing

SYNC (Shakti Youth Network for Change) Zines are a series of compiled writings from high school students and volunteers involved with the youth activist organisation, Shakti Youth. The zines collate several firsthand experiences from culturally diverse and migrant youth from Asian, Middle Eastern and African backgrounds in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. First printed in 2017, the series ran until 2018 with five issues released. The series was established during the 2017 National Youth Week, where the theme that year was “count our voices, our voices count”.

Self-published in a simple A5 stapled zine format, SYNC Zines utilise the medium as a way to create radical space for marginalised voices. Migrant Zine Collective founder Helen Yeung comments on Shakti Youth’s use of zinemaking in the 2018 Hainamana article, Radical, Raw and Real: Asian Diaspora Activism through Zine-making: “[the] issue of marginalisation is exactly why these small A5 publications have also been adopted by grassroots organisations such as Shakti Youth to act as a platform for younger voices to be heard”. Shakti Youth’s zinemaking practice has inspired other social justice zine movements, such as Migrant Zine Collective.

SYNC Zines are usually curated from interviews, writing and speeches made by Shakti Youth volunteers. However, the final issue five (2018) was compiled from work made during the Shakti Youth Leadership Training workshop — a programme for high school students to learn how to advocate for social change and a violence-free Aotearoa. The zines are focused on the “experiences and observations” of migrant youth and seek to illuminate the writing of young people on critical social justice issues such as feminism, family violence, racism, sexism, and more. Shakti Youth Auckland Coordinator Emma Cho states that zines “expose high school students to different mediums so they can voice their opinions…it also means that their experiences reach a wider audience”. The SYNC zines have created a platform for Asian, Middle Eastern and African youth to reflect on their experiences and write about relevant social justice and political topics.