Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Into the Fold is part of the Texas Podcast Network, the Conversations Changing the.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: World brought to you by the University of Texas at Austin. The opinions expressed in this podcast represent the views of the hosts and guests and not of the University of Texas at Austin.
Hi, welcome to into the Fold, the mental health Podcast. I'm your host, Ike Evans and today we are delighted to bring you episode 116 and young and Invincible. We are at the close of the first regular session of the Texas Legislature to take place in the era of COVID The Texas Legislature meets for about five months every two years.
Its agenda is enormous and things happen with breakneck speed.
Despite its importance, meaningful involvement in public policy work is a huge challenge for many and mental health policy is no exception.
For many groups and individuals, their ability to engage in mental health policy work is constrained by time, budget and lack of expertise. The Hogg foundation has been doing its part to address this through the Policy Academy and Fellows Program. First launched in 2010, the program's goal is to increase individuals and organizations capacity to advance mental health policy in Texas while also increasing the consumer voice in policy development and implementation.
Last year we celebrated the 10th year of this cornerstone initiative, which is still going strong with a fresh cohort of Policy Fellows.
For this episode, we'll be getting to know one of our newest Policy Fellows grantees, a remarkable organization called Young Invincibles. And I'll level with you, I chose them for this episode in part because I found that name just totally irresistible. Young Invincibles was founded by a group of post secondary students in the summer of 2009.
Their mission is to amplify young adult voices in policy debates over health care reform, education and economic security.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: With their Policy Fellows grant, they're supporting the development of campus based programs that support young people in their mental health and well being, with a special focus on young people of color who are first generation, low income or student parents.
Rio Gonzalez, their newly hired Policy Fellow, is playing a pivotal role in that effort.
They are here with us to talk about their work.
Joining them is Aurora Harris, the Southern Regional Director of Young Invincibles.
Ann Raquel Murphy, an El Paso Community College student who recently took part in a storytelling circle.
The Young Invincibles hosted last year and has taken up the cause ever since.
To put it simply, we're discussing what invincibility looks like in the realm of policy. Rio, Aurora and Raquel, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:03:22] Speaker C: Thank you for having us.
[00:03:23] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:03:24] Speaker E: Thank you, thank you.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: My first question is for you, Rio.
You're still early in your fellowship what sorts of things have you had the opportunity to learn and what has been your focus during the legislative session?
[00:03:39] Speaker E: Yeah, first, thank you for having us. I am excited to be here and to share some of the amazing work that we are doing.
To answer your question, I've been doing a lot of learning. This fellowship has been unlike anything I've ever done before. It's been my first full time job and it's allowed me to grow in so many ways.
Prior to working with Young Invincibles, I didn't know how the legislative sessions worked or how to be involved in policy and advocacy work. And now I am creating and leading virtual events that focus on just that. Along with uplifting the voices of young adults, I've helped create our mental health policy agenda and our policy priorities through hosting storytelling events in which we engaged with students of color who are attending either an HBCU or a minority serving institution and just asking them to speak on their experiences on seeking or accessing campus mental health resources.
Not only did these conversations help us come up with our policy priorities, but they also helped us create Senate Bill 1521, which relates to creating a mental health task force to study mental health services provided at institutions of higher education.
And what this bill would do is it would help Texas create a collaborative research on the capacity of institutions of higher education to identify and address the mental health needs of today's students.
It would also help identify structural barriers that impact student mental health while also exploring effective ways to meet the needs of historically excluded populations in higher education.
And we believe that the research findings from the task force committee will allow Texas to take innovative steps to address the problems of mental health care on college campuses. This bill has really been my main priority this legislative session, and it's allowed me to work with a lot of our coalitions.
Young Invincibles I am part of the COVID Texas now coalition, which is a coalition that really focuses in expanding Medicaid as well as the Texas Coalition for Healthy Mind. It's a coalition where partners are really focused focused on mental health care issues. And just being involved with these coalitions has allowed me to bring a young adult voice into these spaces and to also uplift student voices, seeing that a lot of these coalitions do not necessarily focus on our population of young adults between the ages 18 through 34.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Aurora, this next question is for you. Can you give our listeners more background and context about Young Invincibles, the history of the organization and the nature of its work?
[00:06:41] Speaker C: Absolutely. So Young Invincibles was founded in the summer of 2009 by a group of college students.
This was when the initial debate over the Affordable Care act was raging on in our country.
And our founders were really discovering that Youth Voice was really missing. I mean, this was about to transform the healthcare system as we know it for millions of young people. And they felt like the young adult piece was, like, missing from the debate. And so they got together in their school cafeteria and Young Invincibles was born.
They decided to, you know, back in the day, this was when Facebook was the hottest social media channel at the time. Now, I guess you could say it's maybe TikTok, but at the time, it was Facebook.
And they started out just creating, like a Facebook group, creating a small website and gathering stories from young people in the D.C. area around why health care was important to them. And they really wanted to push back against this idea that young people thought that they were young and invincible and really wanted to sort of smash that narrative and let people know that young people really did care about health care access and affordability and had something to say.
And so after that, Young Invincibles was born. We decided to have Hill Days.
We decided to meet with legislators in D.C. and we were instrumental in getting young people to be able to stay on their parents plan until the age of 26, all those years ago. So we were instrumental in that piece of the Affordable Care Act. It was kind of our claim to fame starting out.
And so we had that huge victory. And sort of riding on the wave of that, we decided to listen even more to young people and engage even more. And we started to hear about college access, we started to hear about affordability, we started to hear about jobs. I mean, this was in 2009, 2010. So for some context, this was the recession during the Obama years. And so young people and millennials were really struggling at that time and wanted to see more progressive policies that really met their needs.
Young Invincibles started to not only discuss health care, but also started to discuss higher education and jobs. What our work looks like here in Texas is we produce a lot of reports. We really look into the persistent problems that are facing young people. We really try to help decision makers, institutions, understand what it's like to be a young person navigating today's economy and what young people actually need to thrive, not just survive.
And then we also engage young people in the process. We train them as leaders, to testify at the Capitol with us, to write reports with us, to lead storytelling circles like Rio mentioned earlier and Raquel participated in, and to really join us and help guide our work. So that we can truly create policy change for young people by young people.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Raquel, it's your turn. How did you come to be involved with Young Invincibles, and what sorts of things have you been doing with the organization?
[00:09:43] Speaker D: Well, I am that spectator. I am that person that when I do, I have millennials, everything. And nice to hear them talk, speak out, tell the world. Being the veteran, I want to learn. I want to be able to understand what it is. And it's good to see that they can speak. And there is organizations out there that are willing to help and not be so stressed mentally.
Of course, if you can take care of your mind, you can take care of your physical appearance, you can take care of everything else. And when I did the first storytelling, I was really intrigued because it was about, you know, hearing them out. And of course, this pandemic hit everybody really bad. So that was a great way to hear young invisibles. And even one of the times that I missed the story, I had to go and see them on their social media. So I could see, like, what did they talk about this time?
So it's good. I mean, I am that parent, that person that wants to know where our resources. You know, being minority, being in a place where you have to, you know, financially, hardships, health, you know, not everybody can have medical.
So to know where to go, where to reach out.
This is why I like, you know, what I'm seeing or what it is. And I am that person that wants to see what else you guys have to offer and how can we help? What can we do? What can my community can do to help?
[00:11:37] Speaker A: One thing that I've been wondering is, I would think that it's never too.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Early for people to start to think.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Of themselves as leaders when it comes to civic engagement.
We're focusing on young people and young adults. So what particular challenges or obstacles do younger adults experience that an organization like yours works to overcome?
And are there examples?
Maybe. Aurora, we can start with you, and then the other two can jump in.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: Sounds great. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right in terms of the fact that there's never.
It's never too early to start seeing yourself as a leader.
And I think when you look at history and even currently right now, who's in the streets fighting for liberation and justice, it's always. It always has been young people at the helm. And so it's definitely never too early to start. I think in our experience, organizing and working with young people, a big barrier is sort of what is my role.
[00:12:41] Speaker E: Right.
[00:12:41] Speaker C: Like, these problems around college access and mental health care access can feel so big.
What role do I even play if I wanted to sort of, like, engage? And so one of the first things that we do is we do an activity with young people to kind of help get them thinking around what role should they even kind of play in the first place? So we do this really great exercise where we pretend that there is, like, a big natural disaster. And we ask young people, what role would you play? Would you be, you know, the activists in the streets that's protesting at the governor's mansion? Would you be on the front lines passing out water and getting people medical care?
Would you be in the halls of the legislature, you know, helping to testify?
Or would you be, you know, putting on a town hall to see what the community needs are and sort of organizing? And so we really try to help young people understand what is your role in social change? And kind of like, what role do you want to play?
And then the next part of that, I think, is when you're young and you're entering social engagement work and activism work for the first time, you need a lot of skills because you're new.
And so it's sort of like, once you figure out what that role is, what are those skills that you need for that particular role? So for us as advocates, a big thing is understanding who your decision makers are, right? Who can make the decisions for you? A lot of times, you know, we all might be thinking it's Governor Abbott, for example, when really the person who makes that decision is your board, you know, your school's board, or something like that, right? So really understanding, like, who your decision makers are, how do you craft a message?
How do you write an engaging letter?
How do you organize other young people around you to put pressure and power on decision makers to get the things that you want?
And so we teach young people in our Young advocates and youth Advisory Board programs to have those skills.
And then I think, lastly, I think a big barrier for young people, and I would say this for all people, is that a lot of us join movement work and work for a more just society and liberation because we've experienced so much trauma of our own.
We come to movements because we don't have access to mental health care. Our family members didn't have access to mental health care.
We know what it's like to be hungry, to not have the resources that we need to survive. And so what does it look like to sort of care for yourself and understand your own trauma and life experiences and stories while doing movement work at the same time. And so even just today at Young Invincibles, we had a training on trauma, recognizing triggers right in each other and empathy right today. And so we also train young people on how to sort of navigate community care and self care as young people entering movement spaces as well.
So those are just a couple of things that I see and ways we try to address it at yi, But I don't know if, Raquel or Rio, you have things to add.
[00:15:46] Speaker E: Yeah, I think a particular challenge that comes to mind is imposter syndrome, which impacts confidence, and this really impacts many students and young adults. It's something that we see start to develop in our education careers.
And speaking for myself, it's been a very real barrier that I face. It shows up in ways that make me question if I belong in a certain space and if my voice even matters. And I think a lot of young adults feel this way, feel disenfranchised, and struggle to uplift their own voices. But since I started working with Young Invincibles, this has really helped chip away at this imposter syndrome, and it has given me a set of tools to combat and question that mentality. I've learned to write a testimony and share my own stories with our legislators. And I know that there's real power behind storytelling, and it's just a way to raise awareness, empower students, while also giving that human connection to complicated issues.
And we at Young Invincibles really believe that powerful stories help drive change.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: Okay, Raquel, I would love to hear from you on this question again.
[00:17:00] Speaker D: I get so intrigued with young people because I, you know, when I was growing up, I was so sheltered, I could not speak. I could not. I had to, you know, keep my. My thoughts, my. My opinions to myself.
I couldn't really be able to express. You know, I get confidence from the young generations. You know, they're like, if you, yes, do it, Rocky, you can do it. Come on. I'm like, no, it's not right. It doesn't know. Yes, you can. And just you hear them out and they have. They own it. You know, they are so proud to be able to talk and they speak with so much confidence, you know, that they give me confidence where the way I grew up, you couldn't.
You couldn't do any of that. And so I do see young people speak their mind more. And it's beautiful that there could be resources for them to.
To help them out, to open the doors for them. And yes, we want to hear you any. Anything they say is a smart topic. You know, and where before my parents would look at me like, what? Just, just go to your room.
You know, that's.
Stop talking nonsense.
But I do love the fact that our young generation, they just perfect. And if they could be the resources for them to come out and welcome that. Absolutely, yes. I mean, they are great minds, great leaders, some, you know, like 20 years younger than me and they're more powerful than my generation.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: One thing I take from that is, you know, one challenge is, is I guess, getting the sense that your right to speak is recognized and valued by other people.
And so I would imagine every young person has to confront that in some way.
So, Aurora, the world has changed a lot since our last Policy Fellows Cohort started in 2018.
How different would your organization's work and focus have been like in 2018 compared to now?
[00:19:33] Speaker C: Yeah, I love this question because it helps me reflect on our 2018 sort of policy priorities and where we were.
And when I think about it, at Young Invincibles, we were the ones, you know, calling out the fact that.
[00:19:56] Speaker E: The.
[00:19:57] Speaker C: Texas legislature only found one state college that was actually meeting the national counselor to student recommendation of 1 to 1000 students. You know, we were calling for greater access to telemedicine and telehealth for young people who wanted to access mental health care services virtually.
We were thinking about defending the ACA and Medicaid expansion for young people in our state. We were looking at debt free college. We were looking at equal access for undocumented students.
Essentially. We were calling for the exact same things that we are calling for right now.
I think what this pandemic has just done is brought a sense of urgency to maybe a particular set of decision makers that the urgency wasn't there before.
But for the young people that we fight for and alongside, I don't think we would have changed much. I mean, it was still needing access to healthcare, needing access to mental health on campus in order to complete college. And that fight is still going on today. It's just a bit more urgent to a different set of people. But for us, it's. It's never changed. Those priorities haven't changed. If anything, the pandemic has just sort of lit a fire under us even more to just fight for these things even harder. But we've always had the same policy priorities, right? And I'm really hoping that the legislative session really can see how important mental health access is for all of us. I think all of us being sheltered, not being able to see our friends and families, not having access to the things that we need to sort of take care of ourselves has really shown mental health in a new way, maybe to a group of decision makers that hadn't really seen it before. And so I'm hoping this helps us get some of those bills across the finish line. But overall I wouldn't change much because we've always been fighting for those same things. And I'm just hoping that the pandemic maybe changes some of our friends who normally wouldn't prioritize our issue areas as.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Much as they have been Rio, this question is for you. What from your own personal background and experience are you hoping to infuse into your work for Young Invincibles?
[00:22:15] Speaker E: Yeah, thank you for asking that. I already feel like my personal background and experience are being infused into the work I do at Young Invincibles. If I can share my story, you'd be able to see how that experience helped shape the Senate Bill 1521, which I strongly support and believe it in this bill so I was diagnosed with anxiety a couple of months before my college graduation and throughout my lifetime my parents rushed me to the ER several times for severe dehydration caused by vomiting episodes.
The shortest episode lasted five days and the longest has lasted 10. I've had medical professionals treat my dehydration and called the cause of it a medical mystery.
And prior to my diagnosis I had spent several nights in the hospital awaiting a potential hysterectomy surgery for and ovarian cyst that was thought to be causing my endless vomiting.
And I felt a wave of relief thinking that this medical mystery had been solved. But the day of the surgery I got a final ultrasound and found out that my ovarian cyst had burst. And with that news came that that expectation that the vomiting would stop and I was discharged and told to return if my symptoms continued.
The symptoms did not stop, but I was unable to return to the hospital due to financial circumstances.
The ER is very expensive.
I had no other choice but to write out this episode.
Each new day I prayed that it would be my last and eventually it was.
A month later I followed up with my doctor and I told her this story. She diagnosed me with anxiety, which is triggered by this thing called cyclic vomiting syndrome. And that was the last time I ended in the er.
And I think if my anxiety had been diagnosed sooner I would have been able to receive adequate treatment and it would have saved me a lot of pain and money.
Unfortunately, my campus didn't promote the mental health services available to their 40,000 plus students too well, and there were horror stories of long wait times that only added to the stigma of seeking treatment.
So my story is not unique and there are many stories regarding students needs for accessible mental health services that resonate with Texas. Our institutions of higher education are understaffed and do not meet the recommended staff to student ratio of one provider for every 1,500 students. And that makes it extremely difficult for students to get the help they need.
So this is a universal problem that Texas should take action. And it's really time that colleges create mental health awareness and stigma reduction initiatives, as well as more capacity. And I believe that this will allow students with stories like mine to access the treatment that they desperately need. And I think that If Senate Bill 1521 were to pass, it would ensure that students are receiving the mental health supports they need. And you know, we should really be planning for a future of mental health wellness by creating this task force that will allow us to study the true campus mental health landscape of institutions of higher education.
And by doing so, we will have a better understanding of the current needs of today's students and have a better know how to address these mental health care gaps on campuses. And also by doing so, we will be setting up our students for success and college completion.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: So this last, this last question is for all three of you.
Do you have any personal moments or stories that testify to the impact that you're having or would like to have? And I'll just toss that out to the group.
[00:26:03] Speaker E: I guess I can start. I think Raquel being here speaks to the impact that we're having.
And you know, she was a participant in one of our storytelling events and now she's here with us continuing to be involved.
And I think the storytelling events really helped open a door of vulnerability and possibility with the people who participated. As Raquel mentioned, it was just, it provided a welcoming space for people to speak about mental health and the mental health world that they wish they lived in.
And at Young Invincibles. I think a lot of the work that we're doing is opening up more possibilities that relate to how we should be thinking about mental health when it comes to the intersection with higher education.
We've heard a lot of stories from the participants on how the pandemic has impacted their mental health and how they really wish that they had resources available to them that were accessible, affordable, and really helped chip away at that stigma.
And you know, some students mentioned that the reason they didn't seek resources was because they had insurance under their parents. And if their parents found out that they were seeking mental health resources that it was just going to create this cultural drama for them and it was just easier for them to avoid that.
And you know, students also are not seeking care because they just don't know where to look.
So if we had mental health awareness initiatives on college campuses, we wouldn't be finding that problem. Students would know where to look online and who to ask.
And by raising that awareness, you're also chipping away at that stigma because it's starting a conversation.
I would say another way that we've been having impact is we recently had a young advocate who's in high school testify on why educators need mental health and suicide prevention trainings.
And the story that she told us was that during her high school career, she lost three classmates to suicide and saw a lot of her peers struggle with mental health challenges, yet her institution didn't provide the mental health services that the students in that school needed.
And she saw Senate Bill 1144, which would require educators to get mental health and suicide prevention trainings every two years. She saw that as an opportunity to train the people who see students every day to notice and respond to signs of emotional stress and to not penalize students for their mental health challenges and if they're in crisis, as we often see that people in the BIPOC community are often penalized for their mental health.
And that this bill will really give an opportunity to give teachers the tools to support students in seeking mental health supports. And I think just allowing working with our young advocate has allowed her to uplift her own voice and share that story with our legislators in support of that bill.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, that's incredible, Rio. I definitely think the storytelling circles and the young people we've had engaged in the policy process has really been so uplifting and really speaks to the impact that we want to have.
I think for me, what really inspired me as a director to approach.
[00:29:56] Speaker D: The.
[00:29:57] Speaker C: Hogg foundation and really think about this work is I've been at Young Invincibles for four years and in engaging and working with students, particularly students of color and low income students, I have seen them with my own eyes, have to drop out of school, take several semesters off just to be able to balance their life taking care of children. Right. Like with the pandemic. I think, you know, we lost about three young advocates in the program right at the start.
Just having to sort of balance it all and it just being too much for their well being and really, it just really fired me up and put a passion in me about how to address this from a place of College completion and really having decision makers understand that students, and particularly marginalized students, really do need those mental health supports in place in order to be able to finish their degrees and do so in a timely fashion where they're not having to put it off because they can't sort of take it all on because they just simply don't have the resources and the support they need to sort of navigate it all. And so that's what really inspired me to do this work. Just seeing the students over the many years I've been working out why I have to make those really, really tough choices.
And I don't think it should have to be a choice. And like Rio said, I think our policy work is aiming to open up those possibilities and really rethink what a campus can mean and look like for today's students.
And so, yeah, I think that's kind of where I'm at.
[00:31:32] Speaker D: And, you know, listening to the stories with, with the mental health.
Yes, a lot of I myself, when I just got out of high school and I went straight to college, I was so intimidated. I was so scared because I didn't know where to go. I didn't know who to call, who to who to guide me.
My parents were too strict. So the mental part, you're confused. You're young. You don't know what you want in life.
You can't say that to your parents because if they tell you that you want to go talk to a psychiatrist, they look at you like, what? What's wrong with you? No, you cannot. What's going on? You know, so your parents get all. Then they start crying and they make you cry, then they make you, you know, and all of a sudden it was just, I just want someone to talk to. But they turn it into a whole everything. And there's a lot of kids that, yes, their parents could have insurance, but they have to go through their parents. And a lot of kids don't want the family to know what they feel because they're not going to understand what they're feeling, you know, but yet when you, when the schools, the resources, they can open the doors to that without having, you know, because if it's the parents, if it's the cousins, if it's the boyfriends, if it's the girlfriend, right away you get, you. You get either stereotype, you get judged, you get. So if they could have, the schools could have that, I would have gotten a degree 20 years ago.
Instead, I had to go through a whole hard challenges in life. You know, I had to Join the military. Because I had had a baby and I had postpartum depression.
So before I would hurt my child, I'm like, let me get out of here. And, you know, but nobody would understand that, you know, nobody would understand.
Wow. You know, you're leaving your baby, but in your mind, you're like, no, I just don't want my. To her. So you go. You do this harder things to keep your mind busy. So then through everything, then 20 years later, I can just barely, and I still get scared. I was telling Rio, one of the classes, I stayed in the car because I didn't want to be late. I was already late, so I'm like, I can't walk in the class.
So I just stayed in the car. It's like, no, I'm not gonna go, because everybody's gonna look at me that I'm late. So if they could be resources that the people to just talk to be, you know, people that are. That are there to talk with the students, you know, women, boys, girls, everything.
Make it comfortable for them, make them feel welcome. And I think the school would be the perfect place to avoid decisions that a person cannot make themselves. You know, they do. We all need that. That the little guide, you know, without being judged.
I mean, because not everybody. There might be the same blood, but it's not the same mind.
So, you know, one person could be strong, but not the other person. So it could be twins, and there's still two completed persons.
[00:34:49] Speaker E: So if that.
[00:34:50] Speaker D: If that could be done in the schools, that would be just a big step, a big help for the students and for the parents, because it's, you know, once you have to let your kids go, it's a big, you know, like, heartache and everything because you don't know what's out there. But if you. If, as a parent, know that the schools offer other people's. For their kids to talk, that's a big, big plus.
[00:35:16] Speaker E: Get me started. I could be talking and talking.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: So one sort of takeaway from this is that amplifying the voices of younger people is not just doing them a favor, but it is also enriching our.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Collective efforts at problem solving. There are so many dire problems confronting us as a society that we will.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Not begin to get a handle on unless.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: And unless young people are part of the conversation.
Please forgive me, dear listener, as we did experience some technical difficulties during our zoom call, the interview that you just heard, my trusty audio recorder ran out of battery power, and so it quit recording just as we were wrapping up that interview.
So Rio Gonzalez, Aurora Harris and Raquel Murphy, if you are listening, I just want to thank you so much for taking the time.
We really do appreciate it.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: And having just mentioned Raquel, I would.
[00:36:29] Speaker B: Now like to transition us to something that she, she mentioned during that interview. How it is that she first became involved with the Young Invincibles through their storytelling circle. I thought that this would be an opportunity to just give you some of the flavor of what one of their storytelling circles is like.
I have long been impressed by the power of narrative for both healing and teaching.
And also just because testimonial as a form has such a time honored place in the the history of mental health and approaches to mental health and mental illness.
So I'm going to, I'm about to take you back to Raquel Murphy.
This was, this is a recording of, of her participation in one of the Young Invincibles storytelling circles.
Just to give you an idea of what it's about.
And here we go.
[00:37:44] Speaker E: We will now be diving into the meat of our discussion or if you're vegan or vegetarian or entree.
Either way it's going to be in the words of Dora, belicioso. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. We can do both. Popcorn or raised hand or in the chat box if you're ready to go next. But our first question, and I'll go ahead and pop it in the chat box is what was the time that you felt mentally well at school?
What systems supports did you have?
[00:38:16] Speaker D: Actually this pandemic because I'm a talkative person. I love interacting. So that was part of the reason why I was like, you know what? I'm older but I want to join college. I want to be around people, I want to doing different activities. I'll always be talking because that's what I like to do. So I also got hit with COVID I had to be in here and I'm going out of my mind. I'm like, I'm so used to like, what do I do?
[00:38:43] Speaker E: What I do do.
[00:38:43] Speaker D: So is like I started, you know, the nice thing about EPCC is that it does, it invites you. I said, well, I want to talk. So I thought, you know, let me see what's out there, what's going. Because when I was on campus, it was awesome. It was amazing. It opened. I cried my first semester because I was like, I'm too old for this. Like, I can't be doing this. But once I started interacting with students, strangers just, they just gave me more comfortable. I got, I was able to talk. I was able to feel like, you know, like I belong somewhere. So this happened and I'm like, oh my God, what do I do now? So just hearing you guys and seeing different faces and just seeing smiles, seeing everything, hearing stories like, you know, like, you know, like Aaron wanting to be, you know, sometimes I want to do it too, but I'm like, I'm too afraid. I was like, ah, I don't want to hurt myself. But it's true. You just want to beat something because you're confined. You just can't get out there. And running was my thing. But I can't even go out there because, you know, you're in fear of like. Even though I've already been almost a month that I've been quarantined because my test kept coming positive and inconclusive and I'm like, I couldn't even go running, not even around the neighborhood.
So this, I think it's been a lot, a lot of help.
So I'm glad.
And there I go. I'm a talker.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Young Invincibles is the second new Policy fellows organization that we have just recently gotten to know.
Just a few episodes ago we had the pleasure of meeting another organization with an enticing name, the Girls Empowerment Network. Here's their policy fellow Vanessa Beltran on what girls face on their way towards seeing themselves as leaders.
[00:40:39] Speaker F: Yeah, just related to how we are helping girls overcome these obstacles for leadership, there's a really interesting report that came out earlier this year actually from Girls Leadership that shows us that black and Latinx girls are ready to lead. They have the aspiration and capacity, but they often don't get the support that they need from their school or school systems because of gender and racial biases that really lead to deficit based thinking. And it hinders girls from reaching their full potential. And so in preparing this advocacy curriculum, we really see it as a framework for building self efficacy because we're able to pull together all of the six Cs confidence, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and coping skills and actually put them into practice in this advocacy space in collaboration with other girls. And we're really equipping them with the knowledge that they can do anything within their own lives, but also that they can change the world.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: That clip you just heard is from episode 108, Girls Empowerment. You can find a link in the show description for this episode wherever you find it and that does it for this episode. We're so glad that you could join us. If you have comments or anything that you would like to share about the podcast, feel free to reach out to us at into the foldustin utexas.edu. especially thoughtful comments will be acknowledged during a future episode. Just as taking care of ourselves enhances our ability to be there for others, so it is that when we're able to be there for others, we enhance our own resilience. Special thanks to Anna Harris, Veronica Rodriguez, and Julia Sue Frin. Please leave us a review and subscribe to us on the podcast app of your choice. You can find us on itunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Tunein. Thanks for joining us.
[00:42:39] Speaker C: Sam.
