Candidate for
Member Governing Board; Alvord Unified School District

For the past 13 years I have been a client of the Alvord Unified School District. Early in my high school career I realized the power of positive youth development and contributed much of my time to that. Because of my committment to youth, the Riverside County Office of Education's Safe Schools Unit gave me the opportunity to become the first youth in the Sate to become a 40 Developmental Asset Trainer, and later hired me as the County's first Youth Developer & Presenter. During High School I was elected as Youth Commissioner of the Second Supervisorial District of Riverside County, and was also the first youth ever elected as Vice Chair of the Workforce Development Boards Council for Youth Development.

I believe that leadership is action not position and have done so accumulating over 900 hours of community service with over 50 different organizations including Pacific Bell Pioneers, Keep Riverside Clean and Beautiful, Habitat for Humanity, Rebuilding Together Riverside, etc.

Currently I am attending Riverside Community College (passing up an opportunity to attend Stanford University so that I can make a difference here in my own community) and continue to imapact County Youth as a whole with the Riverside County Office of Education. I hope to become a teacher some day where I can influence countless lives, just like the many educators I have had. Even though youth only represent 30 percent of the population, they are 100 percent of the future. When it comes to the future we cannot build it for our students, however, we can build them for the future. The way I see it we have a simple choice; we can either build youth, or jails to contain them.