Daniel Alva-Willatron calls for rebuilding system and youth investment

Okay, thank you so much.

All right, good afternoon.

My name is Daniel Abawoletron.

I'm a youth advocate with Youth Represent.

I'm an artist and a believer that the system that we have now needs to be completely broken down and rebuilt.

I would like to thank Chairwoman Stevens and the members of the committee for giving me a chance to testify.

I would like to start off with the fact that gangs were formed to protect black communities, but as we know now, times have changed.

Young people need direction and support to understand that they have the power, that they can have power in a positive way and embody their self-worth.

The city will keep sending youth to detention if we don't invest in these programs.

These programs that do this work, programs such as Exalt, Youth Justice Network, Cases and Exodus, and many others.

A lot of these programs use preventative measures.

and enforce self-empowerment, as I definitely know y'all heard about preventative measures earlier.

These programs provide youth with credible messengers, aka mentors, who can help youth get into even more programs and stay out of trouble.

They have the experience and can come to young people and say, this is who I was and this is who I am.

They can aid youth in changing from who they are now to who they can become.

When young people are given the right resources and opportunities, it's unbelievable how far we can go.

Young people need money, paid employment, stipends, even access to funding and grants for young people to build their own programs.

We need education about advocacy skills, other programs that are available, networking outlets, and maintaining those outlets.

We need mental health treatment and therapists or psychiatrists who can understand cultural competency and meet young people where we're at.

This means options to work with gender expansive therapists as well as therapists and psychiatrists who are from the same racial background or have similar lived experiences.

People with the most relevant lived experiences sometimes can't even get licensed as a social worker, therapist, doctor, and etc.

Because of background checks and restrictions.

Youth doctors and counselors should be proactive in their work and we should feel like the people around us actually care.

And those people should also be reaching out to us if we miss appointments to try to figure out what's going on.

If you don't have the youth in the forefront, change is never going to come.

Youth want to be heard, but too often we get shut out.

We get painted in a negative connotation, but we have a voice and every

Everyone should just let us be our voice.

That was pretty much that.

So I thank you all for your time today.

See, it's just me.