Narratives and storytelling can play a powerful role in collective impact initiatives—it can help re-frame a contentious debate into a common goal, clarify root causes of inequities, advance equity, and provide a means for young people to reclaim their power as they navigate systems that so often seek to strip them of it. This session will examine how Say Yes Buffalo, along with its partner Education First, use the power of stories to drive systems change and shift how we talk with and about young people. In particular, speakers will share tools and explore how they have used storytelling at the Boys andMen of Color Initiative to promote narrative change for youth, at regional partnership tables to articulate a shared vision for racial justice, and through the national We Refuse to Lose series to help shift mindsets about what holds inequities in place—and how we can eradicate them.