Latino Youth Summit (OH)

Last week I traveled to Toledo, OH to keynote the Latino Youth Summit hosted by the University of Toledo. I was asked to come and give my #AbuelitasHands presentation (PDF), since it was a college booking I offered to speak for free at a local high school.

My first presentation was at Bowsher High School in Toledo. It was the day before the LYS and the Latino students there would see me the following day, plus the crowd was going to be mostly non-Latino students so I had to do something different. Since my presentation is very focused on Latinos, and some of the kids might see it twice, I made nearly new presentation for them. I made the program more about the Legacy presentation I do, and merged the #BeBold items with the theme of my Abuelitas Hands presentation. Lots of students came up and thanked me after, and if you have ever spoken in a HS you know… thats hard.

The following day was the LYS and it was a great program! They bring over 500 local Latino students for the day, and depending on their grade they get different sessions. Some had finance management, some went into a biology classroom, tours of campus, talking to local colleges (not just UT) and learning about the process of going to college.

I was the keynote, and it was during lunch, they would be sitting at rounds and it was the last part of the day… so I figured, wow rough crowd. Speaking to high school students is hard enough without the pressure of competing with pizza and social time before you head back. I knew I was on a list of great speakers like Jimmy Cabrera, Consuelo Kickbush, Monica Ramirez and other national speakers. I do my speech for High School kids a little differently and I added some tweaks as usual this time. I focused more on the being proud of where you are from lesson since Toledo is a lot like Saginaw where I grew up.

I was amazed at their attentiveness! They listened, they participated in the engaged sections and many students raised hands, yelled out answered, and then when it was over came to take pictures with me and thank me for the speech. Plus not to mentioned many of them tweeted me, yeah, HS (and some middle schoolers) were tweeting me… thats another conversation for another day.

Thank you University of Toledo, it was an amazing time, I am glad I was able to help impact the lives of your local Latino children. I am proud to say that I was a Rocket for the Day!