Youth leader of SOMCAN

For this post, I have decided to feature a member from one of our grantees. Angela Madiraga is a youth leader in the SOMCAN (South of Market Community Action Network) community-based organization. She is an amazing young woman, filled with endless ambitions. Here is the story of her journey:


"I've always been concerned about social injustices occurring within my community and world wide. I grew up in the Philippines where I was exposed to a variety of social disparities and my curiosity about the systems revolving around these issues is what pushed me to continue learning about oppression, even after migrating here in the United States. When my family came here in the United States, my parents struggled finding affordable housing and resources that will help us get further from where we were coming from. We lived with having to pay with food stamps for about 6 years with help from a filipino social worker who worked within South of Market. I'm not quite sure how my mother receive resources from Somcan, but I'm assuming it was through a social worker or the school I attended at South of Market called Bessie Carmicheal. During the first couple of years we lived in San Francisco, we roomed with relatives until we could find housing on our own. Along with the challenges we had to face with housing, and my parents being able to find a stable job, somcan also helped us with their free bus pass program. My mother worked with Somcan the most so I was never really exposed to their work until they launched their Youth Organizing Program during the summer of 2009. My mom pretty much encouraged me to join because she knew their work, so I gave it a try. Having joined the summer program, I learned so much about institutional inequalities and truly came to understand my neighborhood and community. Through this program, I learned skills to organize with people about the issues I'm concerned about what's affecting my community, specifically with youth. My work with youth empowering soma has been a struggle and a success and at the same time because through the obstacles I faced as an organizer, it really help me build confidence with myself because I know that I'm fighting for a cause I care about. I'm very passionate about youth development and am a strong advocate for a safe youth space where young people can feel that they have a secure environment to grow as healthy individuals and future leaders of society. I'm currently going to SFSU to major in Child and Adolescent Development because I do believe that working with young children can influence how our future society will turn out to be based on the protective factors this generation can provide. I want to able to help our youth specifically those who are facing a vast amount of risk factors because I understand our country's achievement gap and that most youth who are doing poorly in school are ones who live in poverty . Under serving these youth will most likely put a hold on our already dying economy. So my goal is to really strive for advocating for a safe space for youth to receive resources because I believe that we are the future. Therefore, we should be equipped with knowledge to build the next generation with equality."


Thank you for taking your time to read Angela's journey; I hope that this has inspired you in some sort of way - I know it certainly kindled a fire within me.


Wendy

For more information about Somcan, check out their website: http://www.somcan.org/