Hello Everyone,

I know this response is relatively late in comparison to everyone else responses but it has been extremely busy from me since the Power of Know conference and its been nothing short of marathon of activity. I actually just got back into town from a week long “Student Affairs National conference yesterday.

As I revisit these emails and think about the “Power of Know” Conference this year, I am overcome with accomplishment and happiness. It was truly an honor to work with such a great team of people to put this grand vision together. We truly operated as a community as everyone chipped invaluable skills, knowledge and dedication to this project without personal endeavor or gain - simply to serve our young people.

To this day as a long time dedicated young organizer to this work, I am still astouded by what was accomplished at POK. I would of never thought we would have more than 200 youth show up on a Saturday from 9-4pm for educational conference. Most of them didn’t know anything about it - you’ll found out in the surveys. I was telling Sonney during the CAPITAL ExComm Meeting that when the younger generation and the older generation can work together for a common goal - amazing can happen and I believe that the POK is exemplary example of that power.

Thank you Jeanie for being an excellent chair that mommy our entire committee and youth through this amazing Journey.

Thank you Kyle for being a “brother from another mother” and always having my back and being there whenever I need anything.

Thank you Charles, John, and Shinder for hosting our Parent conference

Thank you Shinder especially for giving a personal testimony about bullying and your daughter. I was beyond impressed by your presentation and I know the young folks felt it.

Thank you Carole for your work for the scholarship recipients and awarding my students that I know are super happy about their scholarship checks.

Thank you Ava, Faye and Anh for coordinating overall logistics especially getting ready for plan E because we soon found out toward the last week of the conference - plan A, B, C, D was not going to accommodate everyone.

To the amazing outreach team especially Fay, Z & Shinder that made our historical outcome possible

To Jerry & Sonney for holding down our safety and security. Jerry - Thank you for reminding us the importance of “Tweeter”

My special thanks goes to Pangcha for your outreach efforts, your ability to recruit all these community groups to participate in our resource tables, for advising me on the POK curriculum, for stepping in last minute to be a co-facilitator for someone that didn’t have a partner and for being the amazing young womyn that I’ve seen you grow up to be. You are everything that I want for the young people of Sacramento to become: passionate, loving to others and critical thinkers

Thank you to all for allowing me to serve as the curriculum chair & Head facilitator - I know there were some reservations with me changing the content that has been used over the years but I hope the changes were for the better and the young people enjoyed the new activities. Due to POK, I was actually invited to be a guest speak for the “UC Davis School of Medicine” as apart of their underserved community health series which is another huge honor. Thank you for allowing me to be the facilitator trainer - we had a awesome group of facilitators that were extraordinary with leading our young people through this process of growth and learning. Lastly it was an honor to serve as your master EmCee. The energy in the room was HOT, figuratively and literally as there were a lot of bodies creating body heat. 

As we move forward thinking about the new year and potential for other work, let us remember to continue to build with the youth and partners that we’ve created. Remember the unity that we built between generations. I heard some very incredible things from the young people of POK. I am blessed to hear these things about our work and it gets me thrilled about the potential for change in our communities.

My interns took the liberty to compile the responses from our evaluation forms and its been synthesized into report summaries for you all to understand the trends and demographics. I think we should rethink through some of the survey questions as I don’t think it did justice to how we really served and or could of done better for the youth. Lets debrief this piece this Sunday.

To end my extremely long letter (which I was inspired to write without reservation because of the letter activity that we hosted during POK) I will leave you with the words of a young person that attended POK this year.

Once again thank you for your partnership, trust and love.

Fong Batman Tran - Say Word! Say Wassup! Say HHHHEEEEYYYY!!!

Student Facebook Status “; I can’t lie , the conference yesterday ‘Power To K(NO)W’ was awesome ! The topics really touched me . Those that didn’t attend missed out big time . Fong Tran is awesome too ahahh . But yesterday , I made a pledge.. I pledged to let go of all my grudges I held , i pledged to work harder , I pledged to push myself & I pledged to take all the negativity from others & take them as encouragement to do my best & prove them wrong . Because someone once told me ,”people will put youu down , but take all those negativity & use them to do better” . Thanks to him for not giving up on me♥”