Strengthening Our Leadership Minds

During Week 5, our Fellows dove into the details of community organizing and expanded on their approach towards civic engagement through a comprehensive training session on applied data and technology integration. Below, Joshua shares his experience being a YOI Fellow so far, highlighting the importance of learning in collaboration with his peers.

“For me, being in the YOI program, it's been freaking amazing because I'm learning something new every single day, whether that be historical context of where we're at, the systemic issues that we're facing in this country, or learning new projects like how to organize effectively and using data and tools to help us strengthen our already good goals.

One thing that really stood out to me is the engagement that we have in our discussions. After everything we learn, we always discuss. We sit down, and we say, OK, how is everyone digesting it? And for me, I think that's the most important thing ever. Because in schools, we're not learning like that. We have a teacher that just says, Do this, do that, do that, but we're not engaging. The engagement is the homework.

I think having this discussion with other peers of mine the same age, same like minds, it's my favorite thing. It's strengthening our leadership minds.”