Youth Rising Summits

Who: Youth in San Diego, CA
Age: Elementary School-College
What: Youth Rising Summits

Dialogue is the key to change and the start of action. This is a pretty cool story about youth creating dialogue around California from Right To Learn.

Inspiring Youth Leaders at Successful San Diego Summit for Right To Learn and YouthNoise

March 29th, 2008: San Diego, CA. We had another successful and exciting summit in our series of Youth Rising events across the U.S. this year. Our California summits in San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Fresno, L.A., and San Diego were important in order to bring students together to discuss real issues in each of the regions’ education systems. In the end, we planned, plotted and discussed how we wanted to take action. San Diego was no exception to this energy, excitement and commitment.

Great HIGHLIGHTS from the day included:

1. Mr. Random Abiladeze performed and facilitated a great discussion about his poetry and put on a great performance during lunch. Random does classroom visits all over the state and is always so interestingly intrigued by meaningful conversations…which leads him to discussions about education and Right to Learn. He also performed in Fresno and we’ll keep him in our sights for future things we do. Tons of talent and a truly warm and generous person who I deeply respect for his art.

2. TracenDANCE- a youth arts and dance non-profit also performed and wow-ed us with their artistic portrayals of movement as a means to discuss social issues- one about technology taking over our lives, one about loving who we are, and one about making your voice be heard. It was GREAT stuff.

3. Participants!!! We had 35 participants from 2 colleges and 12 different high schools. If I could have put together a group of leaders, I could not have done it better. These people that showed up just go to prove how advanced and full of passion young people are. For some reason, we just got the most excited and perfect individuals to attend this summit. They were all amazing, but here are some of my most memorable participants.

a. Miranda, one of our CitiJos and YouthNoise users attended! It was awesome to have that connection, and she was so gosh darn pumped and has started a Day of Action at Scripps Ranch High.

b. Rodrigo, another participant, picked up a RTL flyer the few days before the event, organized classroom visits that Thursday before, and on Friday had 300 young people at his school signed up to do a DAY OF ACTION at his school. This guy was filled with so much knowledge and excitement I could have sworn he’s been organizing for years. He just got it- media advocacy, partnering with parents and teachers, personalizing student stories, educating all his peers on the issue, organizing an event at the school board meeting next week, and extending the movement to be “A MOVEMENT OF ALL OF US, not just one persons idea.” I’m not even kidding, we’ll see him running something big in the future. Keep an eye out.

c. Katrina and Paul - both attend Preuss Charter School in S.D., a charter school in San Diego that buses students from across the region. The budget cuts are affecting their transportation services and may cut some of the bus routes out (not good). They are excited about starting a day of action and doing a “School tour” with their classes..visiting the bigger S.D. public schools to connect with students and learn more about what’s happening in other places. They both are outreach organizers for their school, and are articulate and smart as hell. Seriously. Amazing.

4. Volunteer San Diego volunteers and the SAVY Leaders. They are super amped about all this education stuff. They are dedicating their April Newsletter to the idea of advocating for education. Their staff offered to be adult allies for the students and were amazing positive forces. The leader that showed up from their group were motivated and ready to present this education advocacy at the Global Youth Service day as well!

5. Third Monday in October film screening. We had about 35 folks show up for the screening and talk with Vanessa Roth, the filmmaker. Vanessa is really excited to be working with us, and she just recently won an Oscar for her film “Freeheld” in the documentary short category. She is very dedicated and passionate about education and is working on a future project with Dave Eggers and the McSweenys publishing and 826 Valencia folks on a piece called “The Teachers Project.” They are going to be getting teachers to submit videos and stories about their experiences- trials, tribulations, ups/downs, what sucks what doesn’t, why they love to teach. Then they are going to select stories and create another film from it. She likes us!

Overall this was an amazing summit. We had 5 different groups working on a variety of types of actions for the Right To Learn Statewide Day of Action on APRIL 18, 2008. Sign up your school today and speak out against the budget cuts!

If you want to learn more or get involved in any more of these events Youth Noise hosts, check out www.youthnoise.com/summit or email Lauren at lauren@youthnoise.org .