As a thirtysomething without children, I often find myself thinking about my relationship to the generation(s) after me.

How can I ensure that I am remaining committed and engaged to the issues that matter most to them? How can I put myself in a position to let them lead the charge on building a better and more equitable world for themselves?

Thankfully, it was these very questions that first introduced me to Youth Rise Texas. I've had the honor of being a board member at Youth Rise Texas since 2022, and even all those months later, I'm still struck by the vision the organization holds for the future of Texas:

Our vision for the future is an equitable one where Texas lawmakers, school officials and youth can work together to create the conditions where school communities are investing 50% more of their resources into restorative and healing justice-based models of accountability. We envision a future where the criminal-legal-immigration systems operate in ways that keep families together; where people are not incarcerated for non-violent offences and where cycles of poor health, impoverishment, and trauma can end.

There's a lot that Youth Rise Texas does that really speaks to me, but what makes the organization truly special is their emphasis on youth-led leadership. In a political landscape where everyone seems to want to speak for Generation Z, the young leaders of Youth Rise Texas speak for themselves:

• Fabiola Barreto, director of policy and advocacy, spoke with KVUE about the community's concerns around school resource officers (SROs) in Austin:
  • "We want to ask that they do not over militarize our schools. A lot of young people are scared of seeing guns on campuses."
  • “It's a very scary situation. Especially for our Black and brown young people that have a history of seeing police officers brutalize their communities and sometimes have their own personal experiences with that too."

• Sebastian De Anda spoke with KUT about the dangers of book bans and the important of equitable access to reading material in communities:
  • “Me, as part of the LGBTQ community, reading those books, it was like trying to have this connection with myself and the book, because it was a certain topic I couldn’t talk about with my family because maybe my family wasn’t going to accept me, maybe my family is going to judge me."
  • “When you are an adult and you’re telling a kid, ‘Don’t do this,' they’re going to do it more. So I feel like when you’re an adult and you’re like ‘You can’t read this book,’ now they want to read it because it’s interesting to them. It’s something an adult is keeping away from them and now they want to read it even more.”

As you think about how you might want to give back this holiday season, I would ask that you consider contributing to Youth Rise Texas's GivingTuesday campaign.

There's a lot of challenges on the horizon in Texas., and I, for one, will feel a lot better knowing the next generation has a say in what Texas will be.