On April 25th, 2022, our panel of 12 youth commissioners, 4 Youth Advisory Board (YAB) members, and 2 Career Technical Education (CTE) Hub youth leaders MADE HISTORY as the FIRST ever Youth Homelessness Hearing! We as a community gathered at the City Council meeting to be heard by 94 attendees and over 20 callers made up of youth and adult allies. Every single contribution was worthy and moving. Many of us were deeply touched by pain and hope. We appreciate you all for your presence.
This monumental hearing convinced the City Council to unanimously support our proposal to form a Task Force with Council President Pro Tempore Sheng Thao at the helm. In the coming weeks, our coalition will meet with CM Thao’s office to coordinate next steps. We hope that you will continue to be part of our journey to stop and prevent youth homelessness.
Since Measure QQ was passed in 2020, we have been working to ensure young people can get registered to vote before the 2022 school board elections. As part of this work, we are pushing the District to implement programming to expand voter registration across the District starting in Fall 2022. On June 22nd, the Oakland Unified School District Board is meeting and we need your help to ask them to commit to civic engagement in our schools!
Allow Us to Reintroduce Ourselves!
Recently in May 2022, we officially renamed ourselves as the Oakland Youth Commission to fully represent our youth representatives and uplift youth voices in city policies. To truly account for youth engagement, we also modified our quorum to 9 Commissioners. Thank you to Commissioner Benjamin Salop for speaking at the May 4th City Council meeting! The name change will be official on May 17th. We did it! Click to read the legislation that we authored to rename ourselves as the Oakland Youth Commission!