Blog

Peace & Prosperity Beyond Compare: CEFERINO “ALVIN” MARTIREZ

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yli is My Story

Meet Alvin Engo, Calafia Fellow 2020! Growing up with his strict impoverished family in Southeast Asia, Alvin didn’t really have the freedom to make his own choices. He grew up in a very restrictive, religious and stratified society, with his family coming from military and policing backgrounds, having to endure a decade worth of poverty and class struggle.

Opinion: Students Need Support Online, Too

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yli is My Story

The truth is, learning online is simply not the same. Students, for the most part, have been trained to learn in a classroom. We are social learners: we learn best alongside our peers and have more organic conversations in person. While teachers may have employed online tools in their classes before, moving fully online deprives many students of their natural strengths in the classroom: their teachers and peers.

I Was a Calafia Fellow

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yli is My Story

I hope that readers understand that teenagers notice what is happening around us. We know the information we need is not given to us because older people decide on what to feed us as information. We have to advocate for our ourselves so our voices can be heard. 

Peer Summit 2020: An organizers’ conversation on the importance of this youth-led event

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Campaign Victories

Hosted at Dominican University in San Rafael, Peer Summit 2020 brought hundreds of local middle schoolers from across Marin County together for a full day of presentations, performances and workshops. The event’s success demonstrated, once again, the value of having youth at the helm in event planning and implementation.