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Future Impact! This program is made up of 10 students who completed Youth Impact. Youth Impact is a program that gives students from Opportunities for Learning Charter Schools a chance to learn about their community. Future Impact goes a step further: we not only learn about the community, but we learn about different types of success and the sorts of adversity that people face on the road to success. Our group met every Tuesday and Thursday from 9:00 to 12:00 noon. Many times we went out into Long Beach and Los Angeles to interview different people to receive professional and personal information about their lives, their views on success, and the adversities they had to overcome.

During our 10 weeks in Future Impact, we interviewed James Carey, the owner and Executive Director of a live theatre in Los Angeles called The Attic Theatre, Angela Bessiant, the Manager of the R.N. nurses at St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood, Connie Alvarez, the Volunteer Coordinator at KCRW radio station, George Olivo, FBI Special Agent, Sherlyn Beatty, the Volunteer Coordinator at Long Beach City College, Frank Colonna, the Vice Mayor of Long Beach and City Councilmember of the 9th district, Jerry Cox, the Owner and Manager of It’s A Grind Coffee House, and Peter Kim, a Human Resource Consultant at Southern California Edison. Each of these interviewees has left us with great advice, great quotes, and have inspired us to do positive things.

The students in Future Impact want to break the stereotypes against us: stereotypes that say that we don’t care about what happens to us, that we’re into drugs and gangs, that we’re lazy and stupid, and that we’re antisocial. We break such stereotypes by:
  • Not doing drugs
  • Not being gang affiliated
  • Going to school regularly
  • Doing extra work besides schoolwork
We receive 5 elective credits after completing the program, but the 5 credits aren’t the biggest incentive. It’s the chance to improve our lives and to impact the future!

What Is Success?
There are a lot of definitions for the word “success.” After the 10 weeks we spent in Future Impact learning about success, we believe success is measured not only by money and power but by other things too:

  • Staying true to your values and your individuality.
  • Having high self-esteem and feeling proud of yourself.
  • Finding a career that you are passionate about.
  • Giving back to the community.
  • Being surrounded by loved ones.
Here are some of our own stories of adversity and success:

Shawnna Garcia

 I’ve gone through many adversities in my life, but I’m only going to write about a few. Personally, I’ve gone through so much with my family that if I wrote about it, you would be reading it for hours. I’ve also had a lot of problems in school. In fact, I was out of school completely for three years and that really set me back. But the important thing is that I’ve learned from the past and from the mistakes of people around me. I am going to become a dance choreographer. To do this I am already going to start taking classes at Long Beach City College this spring. I plan to go to a four-year college to get a degree in dance. I would also like to get a degree in biology or something that has to do with animal care. When I was younger I would take in hurt and abandoned animals. Doing this helped me cope with my problems at home. It made me feel good to take care of helpless animals. It made me see that I could make a difference in the world. So in addition to being a dance choreographer, I plan to get a license and own my own animal shelter. So as you can see, my past has empowered my future.

Rebecca Marie Gray

 Throughout your life you will face many different forms of adversity. The biggest adversity I’ve faced is my father being disabled. I had to grow-up virtually over night to help out and to deal with this. But I keep on pressing forward with my life because I want to make him proud. I want him to see me succeed and be happy. To do this, I plan to first finish high school as soon as I can, then go to Long Beach City College to get my AA. After that I will go for my BA and start teaching as soon as I pass the CBEST, CBESS, and RICA. I even know what grade I want to teach: 2nd. Since I feel that my dad might pass away sooner than later, I feel an urgent need to accomplish all my goals as fast as I can so that he will be able to see my success and be truly proud of me.

Eric Ornelas

 My family life has been unstable and I haven’t really had much of a relationship with my father. In spite of these hurdles, I have set 3 goals. My first goal is to graduate from high school. How will I achieve this? I will have to start turning in the maximum of 10 units a month at school. My second goal is entering the United States Marine Corps. By passing the mental and physical tests of boot camp, I can be a Marine. The third goal is a little more difficult to explain. The Marine Corps has a four year contract when you enlist. If I like the 4 years in the Marine Corps, I will make it a career. But if the 4 years aren’t so great, my third goal is to go to college and become a firefighter or paramedic. Having overcome an unstable family life has made me realize that I can overcome any challenge that comes my way. I’m not going to wait for the next challenge to come to me, I’m going to go out and find the next challenge.

Jessica Ortega

 Traditional high school was hard for me. Hanging out with the wrong crowd made it worse. I had bad grades, I didn’t have a good relationship with anybody, and I kept everything to myself. But since I started at OFL, I’ve started feeling better and doing what was right for me. I started to think what does Jessica want? What does Jessica need? I started to think for myself. I know that in the past I did not make the best choices but it’s okay because I learned from them. Now I feel successful because I feel good about myself, I have a great family, I have a place to call home, and I’m going to school. That is why I feel successful.

Jessie Sanchez

 When I was about 14 I stared getting into gangs and was trying to get out. I started meeting the wrong people and hanging around the wrong crowd. Little by little I was committing small crimes like stealing candy from liquor stores and throwing rocks at buildings. I was staying out late, not listing to no one except my “friends” (and I use that term loosely), skipping school, cussing at teachers, and getting into fights all the time. I was always getting truancy notices sent home and was under the constant threat of being kicked out of school. By age 16, I couldn’t enroll in Wilson High because I only had 5 credits. The counselor recommended me to my current school, Opportunities for Learning. This is a charter school that really helped me out a lot. For once in high school I was doing something right. I had discipline, care and most of all…..love. So in my past, I surrounded myself with negative people. But now I am surrounding myself with positive influences. For example, I see myself in the future being a fireman. So I joined Youth Impact and got to meet Terry Harbour, the Fire Chief of Long Beach. I received great advice from him. Across the street from my house is Fire Station #3. Two weeks ago, I finally worked up the courage to go over there and speak to them. One of the firefighters there gave me excellent advice for when I apply for a job with the Fire Department. He suggested that I join the Search and Rescue Team for teenagers, which I am going to do next month. Also, I am currently taking Fire Science classes at Long Beach City College, and I am going to get my degree. If I keep this up and keep on meeting the right people, I will be a firefighter very soon!

Rose Williams

I have faced adversity in my life and have been able to move on. When I was younger, I moved from New York to California. It was a new start for me which meant a new life, a new state, and a new climate, but I learned to adapt. I have been here for 4 years now and I’ve learned to like it. I feel that I am not completely successful in life yet, but I do feel that I succeeded in the Future Impact class. It was a new start for me. In this class I learned a lot about college that I didn’t know before. It made me want to get a degree even more. I learned a lot about setting goals for myself in the future. How I want to succeed in life is to become a veterinarian because I like animals and want to help them. Also, I would like to work in one of those corporate buildings in New York one day. I am glad that I’ve faced adversity because it has made me a better person today.

Shayla Woodard

 Growing up I didn’t have a family that was complete. My father came in and out of my life. When he was gone, money was low. On top of that, my mother had family problems and professional problems. But my siblings and I faced these problems together and overcame them. The first success I will achieve in the future will be finishing school. The second will be finding a career. I don’t know what I want to be but I like fashion designing and law. Third will be to get married to a man that I love, trust, who is loyal to me, and who feels the same way about me. Fourth will be to buy a home and to have 3 kids. Achieving these four goals will make me complete.

Valerie Ann McWilliams Wright

 Whenever someone asks me what adversities I have been through, I can’t help but think of my mom. My mom passed away two weeks before my 16th birthday. My whole perspective changed after that. Before she died, I wanted to hang out with all my friends, not my mom. After she died, all I wanted to do was to be able to spend time with her. Going through life right now without my mom isn’t easy on me because I miss her so badly, but it makes me try harder to stay successful because I want to make her proud. I want to do something with my writing. I try to write any chance I get, mostly free-writing in my journal about my mom and the hardships I go through. Writing about what I’m feeling helps me to get through my problems. I’m still not sure what exactly I’m going to do with my writing, but I know that whatever I do it’ll come from my heart and make my mom proud.

Christy Zimmer

 I had aspirations of playing soccer, and was soon voted captain of the team. Not even halfway through the season my knee was severely injured during a game. This forced me to have a serious surgery and lose a whole semester of school. Due to this loss of school time, I entered Opportunities for Learning. Seeing how strong my mother was during her own struggles and how strong I was during my injury has inspired me to have many goals. I would like to do four things: corporate law, acting, singing, and being able to give back to the community. I have already taken numerous acting classes, have appeared on runway modeling shows, made a commercial with Shaq, and I am currently enrolled in Long Beach City College getting a Liberal Arts Degree. I plan to transfer to a four-year college and earn a B.A. in Theater Arts, then transfer to a university where I will works towards a Master’s Degree in a foreign language. Finally, I plan on going to Harvard and getting a Ph.D. in corporate law. I have faced many adversities and will face many in the future, but no matter what I will pull through and do what I aspire to do.

 
 
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