Youth activism

Youth Talk Back is an initiative by Ceeds of Peace Hawai‘i. Youth Talk Back is a program that empowers youth from across Hawai‘i to become active agents of social change in their communities. After co-founding March for Our Lives Honolulu, I became a youth mentor for the program. Some of my responsibilities included facilitating workshops and preparing youth to present their community initiatives to legislators.

After organizing March for Our Lives Honolulu, we were inspired by the collective power of Hawai‘i's youth. We saw how engaged Hawai‘i high schoolers were, and we were frustrated by the lack of opportunities we had to express our opinions. This is when we decided to begin a campaign to lower our State's voting age to 16. We worked with lawmakers to create the legislation for the bill. In 2020, it passed the State Senate with 22 votes and crossed over to the House. Unfortunately due to the COVID shutdown the bill was never voted on in the House. The campaign was passed down to younger high school students to keep the campaign alive.

The Parkland High School shooting was not the first or the last mass school shooting I witnessed on the news, but it was the first where the survivors ignited a movement to demand lawmakers to protect the lives of students from gun violence. Galvanized by the Parkland survivors, we started a March for Our Lives chapter in Honolulu. We organized high schoolers from across O‘ahu to march through Ala Moana Park to demand safety from gun violence Nationwide.