This week James, Chona and I (pictured above) participated at the College of Marin (COM) Community Partner Convening Breakfast. James is the #1 inspiration and youth leader of AHO, who is now helping to run the organization, and Chona is one of AHO’s incredible Alliance for Youth (AFY) pro-bono financial partners. This event was created by COM to bring community members, who work with transition-age youth, to connect with each other to continue closing the gaps in the system for Marin’s at-risk youth to succeed.
COM’s goal of the breakfast was to find ways for nonprofits to best collaborate with each other to create more comprehensive safety-nets for all youth who are struggling and need support.

COM breakfast participants included local Fire and Police chiefs, College of Marin staff, and wonderful people from other nonprofits like 10,000 Degrees, Huckleberry Youth Programs, Center for Domestic Peace, and many others. It was a wonderful opportunity for AHO to reconnect with its current AFY partners and to recruit new partners to the organization. James, Chona, and I came away feeling ready to continue supporting AHO’s at-youth with even more community connections and resources than we had prior to participating in this event.

At the Youth Leadership Team meeting, we surprised and celebrated James on his 41 st birthday. We had a very productive discussion for how we want to move forward with our future presentations within Juvenile Justice. We decided on a very solid 3-part outline the includes (ourlived experience, our trigger for making a change in our mindset on what was possible, and how
AHO has helped us sustain our new direction.) These 3-discussion components will frame our
time with the at-risk youth at Juvenile Hall. To create this outline, we bounced a lot of ideas back
and forth on how to best deliver our message to these youth. Our aim was to meet them where
they are, hopefully inspire them to hear the opportunities AHO offers, and most importantly to
begin to gain their trust. James is meeting with Juvenile Justice program directors next week. We
are eagerly awaiting to hear how it goes, and even more than excited to move forward on this
project.
Forever busy, but feeling kind-of-cool about it,
Kayla