Being one of the many participants in the E3 Program in Del Norte County from the Del Norte Workforce Center, I dedicated my time to completing this program not just one time, but two times around, and both times I was able to turn them both into success stories for the E3 Program. I made a strong candidate for this opportunity to travel out to Aspen, Colorado for the Opportunity Youth Forum, due to the fact that I brought my own dedication to my workplace and proved that I do stand as an employee with the rest of my team members at Wild Rivers Community Foundation/Building Healthy Communities. I was able to get invited from my previous supervisor Imelda Ramirez who is the program manager for E3, and I was thrilled and honored to be invited to this Opportunity Youth Forum. I had one week to prepare for this travel, and I found myself with thoughts that it was very little time to prepare mentally and physically because I am a full-time student at College of the Redwoods. I managed to arrange my schooling/homework and all the other details with work to properly make myself available for the week of the forum.

Later that day in which I got invited, I found out who else I would be attending with. I thought to myself, there was no other group I would rather go with to this Opportunity Youth Forum, because we all hold a powerful movement within our community to be shown and tell our stories amongst many other leaders around the world. I found out that our group will be taking some leaders in our adjacent tribal lands, a youth organizer for True North Organizing, a Youth Coordinator, our Del Norte Workforce Center E3 Program Manager, and of course my boss Michelle Carrillo the Executive Director for Building Healthy Communities at Wild Rivers Community Foundation. Later on into the week of the forum, I found out that there were other community members attending the forum from our community as well, which brought me to think of what a powerful and changing opportunity our community has with making a voice for all of us back home. The whole invitation brought excitement and more passion to continue the work we do for our progressing community.

As Sunday approached and I was officially loading my bags into my car it began to hit me; I was about to travel on a plane over to some high elevated mountains in Colorado. It was a scary feeling and I was not able to sleep comfortably that Sunday night prior to catching my plane the following morning at 6:00am. Imelda Ramirez was traveling alongside with me and given the fact we are both related as cousins I can say it made the whole worrisomeness of the plane ride become easier to handle because we had each other for support and encouragement that we would make it through and touch ground in Aspen, Colorado safe and sound. We arrived at the airport two hours as recommended prior to boarding our plane, and we were able to meet up with one of our group participants from Weitchpec, CA, which is further south of Crescent City, in our adjacent tribal lands. We all greeted and wished each other a safe flight and walked through the security check, normal and with hopes of nothing turning into an unwanted disaster.

Monday, around 1:00pm, we touched ground in Aspen, although we were very nervously flying above Aspen for over 30 minutes awaiting landing; there had been a slight complication with landing due to the visibility for the plane road track. We had seemed to arrive just when a small storm was beginning to make its way. I fainted in those 30 minutes that we were flying above Aspen. The elevation was incredibly high–over 8,000 ft.–and I got extremely dizzy, lightheaded, and nervous from the information the pilot was giving the entire group of people aboard the plane. With the thought of blessings that my mother had given me the following day, it was just enough to bring me back to my senses of “everything is going to be alright”. And it was.

Arriving on the grounds at the Aspen Institute in Colorado, it was all a great deal of luxurious treatment that I found myself being treated to. They impressed me with all the outstanding care they showed. From grabbing my luggage to offering me all the amenities that for one, I would think the millionaires there in Aspen would be the only ones to be treated this way. On the contrary, it was myself being honored with this hospitality. As we stepped into the main lobby building at the Aspen Institute we were guided to the lunch area where we were served buffet style with assorted freshly made meals by the institute chefs. We grabbed and ate some delicious lunch then headed to our hotel to unload and get ready for our dinner and new participant orientation.

The orientation involved all the participants to gather together and welcome this year’s 2018 Opportunity Youth Forum. We were all greeted as we entered and joined in again on the dinner buffet they had set up for everyone that night. It was all super exquisite food and fine dining that us folks do not get treated with back home in Crescent City. It was fancy, and I felt the high class treatment throughout the night. The first few 15 minutes were for mingling and networking with different partners and organizations. For myself, it all felt really intimidating because of the fact that I only represent myself as a youth involved in a program.

As the night progressed we had the honor of hearing a speech from Yelena Nemoy, one of the Aspen Institute Community Solution partners, and welcomed some live featured performances by Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, featuring a selection from “Dry Each Other’s Tears in the Stillness of the Night,” and “On the Edge…Reaching to a Higher Ground.” The performances were incredible, accompanying our delicious dinner and fancy wine beverages being served. The idea I got from the performances was to gain a reflection of two people working together in order to show support for each other and create sympathy for the strength it takes to be involved within a larger spectrum of work that we all do as a community. It was heartwarming to see such a great art performance between two partners. The night progressed with chills from all corners in the building. The people gathered within the building were all there for the same purpose and dedication to continue the good work around the world for our Opportunity Youth, and for myself I felt a great deal of inspiration throughout my entire time in Aspen.

On Tuesday morning we had a busy start, trying to adjust to the time difference, and getting to the institute on time for the opening presentation. We came along with everyone else to the Doerr-Hosier Center where we all gathered for breakfast each morning. Poetry by Bianca Mikahn was our serenade to our lovely breakfast, followed by Melody Barnes, the Chair of the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, and the new president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, Dan Porterfield. They opened up the morning with their speeches about guidance on the transformative power of collaboration to drive change, thoughts, and the importance of self-care in leadership. We were told to enjoy the sessions and that each and every one of them looked forward to collaborating ideas and sharing networking information amongst us all. My first session was at 10:00am, called “Adapting Entrepreneurship Curricula to Support the Needs of Opportunity Youth”. This was one of my favorite sessions, due to the fact that there were more interactions happening within a group, and we all had a chance to give out ideas, make something, and reflect on our own efforts as a group. These practices are very important, in my opinion, when you are trying to work with a team of multiple people, because the interactions have to bring out great solutions. Practicing these types of workshops teaches skills to become a better entrepreneur.

My second session was “What Counts When Reengaging Youth”. This session included talking about the different areas and data consumptions that are gathered within communities and how we can use this data collection to figure out which areas need to be worked on the most to reengage youth.

My third session for the day was “Making Youth Reconnection Work through Movement, Dance, Meditation, and Love”. This session was a very powerful gathering, and quite intimidating because of the fact that all the main leaders were in this room, including the CEO and President of the Aspen Institute and the rest of the leaders for the forum. They were all warm and welcoming. We started off with an icebreaker activity on partnering up with someone for a quick interview that we would later present to the whole group. Everyone seemed to be very important and CEOs of businesses within their community, and corporations as well. Their little biographies that we got were inspiring, and we later moved on to explaining the success some corporations like BestBuy have accomplished, putting over hundreds of thousands of dollars towards educating youth in the computer tech pathway and giving out applause to a great opportunity for our youth.

As our day ended that Tuesday, the weather got incredibly cold, but it also felt wonderful to be able to experience the Colorado wind and be surrounded by high mountains and Aspen trees in every direction in sight. It was a privileged experience that I will not forget. On Wednesday morning, we were brought to our same routine as Tuesday, although this day we were immersed into the first snow fall of the season in Colorado, which was breathtaking. The snowflakes were massive, perfectly frozen flakes falling from the sky. Our Del Norte group was able to get a table by the windows off to the left of the Doerr-Hosier Center, and we were able to take glances back and forth. Within 30 minutes, the surrounding areas outside were a perfect fluffy color white. It was a site to remember, especially with the ginormous property that the Aspen Institute has, everything was artistically designed to suit a millionaire’s taste in views.

The morning opening session was given by Steve Patrick, of the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions. He made a speech about the importance of sharing the healing-centered engagement framework with the Opportunity Youth Forum network and lifting up community-based strategies for addressing traumas. A speaker later went onto the stage to talk about the importance of being inclusive to all people, whether that be that those people are incarcerated. This Professor of Education from San Francisco gave his speech and displayed some PowerPoint slides about “Shifting to a Healing Centered Engagement,” and explained that in order to heal, we need to understand what we need to heal and know the difference of not just suppressing the symptoms we have, and also supporting youth development workers with transformative change over professional development. His speech was touching and made me reflect on my own experiences I’ve seen in my years, and the fact we need to give more support to strengthen our social, emotional growth and well-being as well. This professor’s name is Shawn Ginwright, a much-respected man among all the forum participants.

As we went on to the rest of our sessions that day, I went off to my next one which was “Designing Community Dialogue to Support Undocumented Youth”. This was a powerful session for me because I was able to tell a real story to the rest of the group who participated in this session. The leaders were Ruth Barajas-Cardona from Bay Area Community Resources, and Thomas Showalter from National Youth Employment Coalition and they both facilitated a problem-solving session that will help us design our own community dialogues for helping to serve the young people in our community. We all had a very different way of trying to create a dialogue that will capture the youth. For example, some of the ideas that were brought to importance were the fact that we need to build relationships with a couple of potential allies and demographic research as well. These two ideas were a part of a big discussion between the group, and we got into detail about each different community we come from.  We later went into detail about facilitating the pathway for the Opportunity Youth amongst this undocumented group. It’s very important to educate people about the importance of knowing your rights and what you may qualify for when you come from an undocumented background of people and share the word to the rest of the people.

I joined into the debrief session with the youth leadership group and it was very interesting to find out the difference that was happening with both youth side and non-youth side sessions. I attended the non-youth sessions and was able to find an equilibrium between both and gather my thoughts to justify that us young leaders are on the right direction to facilitating a movement for all our communities. Understanding the fact that we all have stories that give us more and more strength each time we share those stories. We are gaining the highlight of making an inspirational movement story for our youth within our communities to learn about and continue to grow together to form a powerful change that will impact the youth below us. That equilibrium that I felt was the right hook to cast me into the direction of future change. Becoming involved with the right sources within your community will give you the willpower to further your journey into a right path, because you will be able to feel the good work people put into helping our communities. Feelings are a key important element with doing community work, as in, one must be healed from their own traumas in order to heal the next ones coming up after them into their community. One must feel healthy, safe, and know that healing-centered engagement is culturally grounded onto us and we must view healing as a restoration of our own identity.

Article written and photos taken by Jessica Ortiz.