Samu Tiavolo is a seventeen-year-old from Hayward, CA. He is currently a senior at Mt. Eden High School. He is the ASB Secretary, Polynesian Club president, and has served in his school leadership program for all four years of high school. Samu has the heart to serve the school and his peers. He also serves the [...]

Dennis Hong is from Fremont, California where he spent most of his life and it's mostly a diverse population that connects to other cities in the Bay Area. Growing up “On The Spectrum”, Dennis has always been isolated mostly from his family and peers. He usually got into trouble and this was due to the bullying [...]

Devynn A Trahan is a student athlete at Skyline High school in Oakland CA. He grew up near 23rd Avenue for most of his life. He went to Cleveland elementary school for his early developmental years. He then transferred to Edna Brewer Middle school which is when he started to play football. He attended a few [...]

Victor Camberos was born in Fresno CA and lived there for 11 years before moving to a little city right next to Fresno called “Madera” and lived there for 3 years. He now lives in Alameda County in Oakland, CA. He moved from Madera back to Fresno due to personal family issues and made the ultimate [...]

Kalina Francois was born and raised in the Bay Area. She grew up in Oakland California and moved to Castro Valley California at the age of nine. Her childhood involved moving from a gentrified neighborhood in the Oakland Hills to a predominately white and Asian community. Being a black girl in such a setting was quite [...]

Joaquin Saavedra MacCarthy Thin, grew up in Oakland California. Joaquin, having a Mexican/Vietnamese mom, and white dad, was an interesting upbringing. He felt that when you are young; you are impressionable, building principles, foundation, values, and perspectives. He was 12 when he went to an Art Middle School in Downtown Oakland. Kids used to tell him [...]

Born and raised in Oakland, Aisha Scott knows the pitfalls leading to a judicial system difficult to escape. Aisha was a gifted child whose love of reading had her literally bumping into street poles; and as a student, rarely having homework as it was completed before leaving school each day. Around the age of ten or [...]

What can touch us more profoundly than the stories our loved ones share with us? In the case of Crystrial Murphy, Christina speaks of the mental health crisis that turned her younger sister's life upside down, derailing the pursuit of her college education. Christina and Crystrial are multi-racial/cultural. Born in Berkeley to an African/Native American mother, [...]

Imagine being born into a world full of love and joy. The family cradling you and telling you how beautiful you are. Telling you how happy they are that you are here. That was not the scenario Adelaida “Ady” Rios was born into. Though she was as precious as any other newborn, her arrival ushered in [...]

Jean Black was raised in the East Bay cities of Oakland and San Leandro. From an early age she was aware of the imbalance of power between instructors and students. She realized the power educators had in supporting or derailing a student’s confidence and recalls encounters with teachers in the third grade leaving her with the [...]