Change Starts With Youth

Howdy, Do you feel yourself falling behind with the different LGBTQ+ identities? Are you wondering why different gender identities and sexualities matter? Do you ever find yourself saying "Kids are too young to know about that LGBTQ+ stuff?" Then in that case, the San Joaquin County Pride Center has just the thing for you!  From February to early June, the San Joaquin Pride Center will be hosting workshops for parents to help them navigate their children who are in the LGBTQ+ community. This workshop can also apply to educators who's students are in the community. If you don't know, or think you will ever know (unlikely) a young person in the LGBTQ+ community, then this serves as a good learning opportunity to become a strong ally.  Since people, especially in California, are becoming more comfortable with identifying and/or exploring different identities, more and more people are being more adamant about letting people know who they are. Especially...

Good morning, Changemakers! On Thursday, I headed to a small winery town in Southern California with some friends. As we all got situated into the house we're staying in, I opened up my Facebook app. I saw that one of my old friends from high school posted ABC10's article, Stockton Ranked 4th Worst Place to Raise Children in the Country.  She commented on the post "I didn't turn out that bad." Of course, she didn't turn out "that bad" because she grew up on the north side of town with both of her parents making a significant income. The article's information came from Diversity Data Kids in their 2020 report. According to the data, about half of Stockton's children live in low-opportunity areas. There are not enough programs for children, the air quality is bad, and most importantly, there is severe wealth inequality. How are people going to prosper when they don't have opportunities coming their ways? Of course, since the Youth De...