Our own Dean Welliver, Program Associate at South Kern Sol, recently attended the Inaugural Summit for the Obama Foundation in Chicago. Bringing together civic leaders from across the globe for a two-day summit held October 31 and November 1, the summit was packed with panels, workshops, and speakers including elected officials, writers and artists, social justice leaders, and entrepreneurs.

“My favorite panel was called ‘Getting Women in the Room Where It Happens,’ which included Dolores Huerta,” said Welliver. “There were so many good conversations about how women can support women to deal with sexism in the workplace, tokenization, and self-doubt.” The panel included former National Security Advisor under President Obama, and Mana Al-Sharif, the woman arrested for driving in Saudi Arabia.

Dolores Huerta, Susan Rice, and Mana Al-Sharif speak on the “Getting Women in the Room Where It Happens” Panel

As Program Associate at South Kern Sol, Welliver encourages local youth to find their own voice to raise awareness and visibility of health and race equity issues impacting underserved communities across Kern. Welliver wants to ensure that policymakers and other stakeholders authentically have youth at the table, not just to check of diversity boxes.

“As a youth advocate it is hard to move forward, people doubt you– but it is worse when you’re not at the table, because your perspective doesn’t get there. You want to be seen as well as heard,” said Welliver. “At the Summit, Michelle Obama said that before youth can use their voice, they have to know how to find it. Now with my role at South Kern Sol, I am fostering youth journalist voices who want to create narrative change in their own community.”

Michelle Obama with Poet Elizabeth Alexander

“I came back feeling extremely grateful to Dr. Ross and the [The California Endowment’s] President’s Youth Council, and also Dolores Huerta, Camila Chavez, and the work of The California Endowment,” added Welliver when asked what was his greatest takeaway from the summit.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>