As a 2007 YP4 Fellow, my passion for helping the youth has only grown stonger with the help of like-minded individuals and the YP4 network. I am working on another effort to help the youth of my community.

Here are summaries of some of the workshops I attended today:

Organizing Across Communities: Age & Youth in Action by the Gray Panthers of Metropolitan Washington

Equal Rights for All Americans Championed at Oscars

By Kevin Gosztola

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February 13, 2009

Judges Paid to Send Teens to Juvenile Detention Centers

This evening Nobel Prize Winner and former Vice President Al Gore gave a live webcast organized by Power Vote. Power Vote is a nation-wide non-partisan campaign the Energy Action Coalition has put together to try to motivate a million young voters who will pledge to vote for a clean and just energy solution and to hold political figures accountable for moving to reach that goal.

A few months ago, I was standing in the shower,  I realized that everything I want to do with my life- change the course and the conversation about international human development both at home and abroad, ensure the continuation of life on earth - will be influenced by who wins this presidential election.

Previous entry: a first glimpse: zonke

13 May 2008

South Africa is much the same and different as many African countries that I have visited. Same in the sense of the smell of burning oil and gasoline, shipping containers as buildings, the red dirt, the friendly people, passenger vans as taxis, crazy driving, dogs for security, chickens and goats roaming everywhere, and the seemingly common practice of taking things as they come. The differences and nuances come in the country's history - white minority oppressive rule. White people are not unheard of in this area of Africa and South Africa specifically - uncommon, but not unseen. You get a sense that you are always being watched, but in a different way than what may be experienced in other African countries without such a history. It is more of a, "why are you here" look instead of the, "oh! You are white." The history of white oppression and the current issue of white organizations taking away from the communities makes the dynamic similar in skepticism, but different in why.

This has been a long and on-going process...Who would've thought that we'd have so many amazing local poets in the city of Nashville just dying to perform at a Human Rights event?