We're honored to receive a Bay Area Metro Award for our work with Resilient by Design bringing young people's ideas into a regional climate resilience challenge. The new joint MTC and ABAG awards program honors positive impacts on the Bay Area’s mobility, affordability, resilience and community and recognizes efforts that make the region a better place to live, work and play.

Earlier this week, one of our awesome CP190 mentors Hugo Camacho pointed to Y-PLAN as integral to his Ed Minor experience during his commencement speech.

Y-PLAN student scholars have been making headlines this year! From affordable housing to addressing the future of schools, Y-PLAN Bay Area students garnered attention for their innovative ideas!

CC+S's 2019 Y-PLAN Policy Summit: Planning for a More Inclusive and Resilient Region brought together over 150 Y-PLAN scholars from around the Bay Area to present their research and proposals for greater equity across our region both now and in the future to over 80 community and civic partners. here.

“I believe that the Future Center could be like a foundation for our growth [...] we need people to help us, to be patient, and to see us grow.”  - Peter Diaz, McClymonds High School, Senior

What is natural and what is artificial? If they, as an agile group of teenagers, struggle to cross a busy street, what would their younger siblings do? If sea level rise claims part of their city’s land, who will suffer first? Read about the way Skyline High School Y-PLAN students grappled with these questions and more, with the support of the Center for Cities + Schools, the Resilient by Design | Bay Area Challenge's ABC Team, and the City of Oakland, on their site mapping and inspiration tour on February 15, 2018.

On Friday, September 29th, Y-PLAN received special recognition from Chancellor Christ in the Chancellor’s Community Leaders Breakfast. Along with Y-PLAN and BART staff, AAMA Director Jerome Gourdine and Skyline High School teacher Jamal Muhammad, two of AAMA’s kings attended the event and spoke of their experience during the Y-PLAN process last semester and the their internship with BART over the summer.

Following the Y-PLAN end of the year events in Oakland, BART hired seven students from AAMA Y-PLAN classes for stipended 5-week summer internships to implement one of these proposals: a community mural campaign. Under the direction of Jennifer Easton and Alicia Trost, BART’s Directors of Arts and Communications, respectively, AAMA Y-PLAN interns developed a theme, distributed a call for artists, and made their selections for the Oakland Coliseum BART Muralist during the month of July.

This is the third in a series of blog posts by Selena Perez Tejeda from her perspective as a UC Berkeley student working as a Y-PLAN mentor in Oakland. She discusses the final presentations coming up April 17th and the responsibility adults have to listen to the young people's proposals.

This is the second in a series of blog posts by Selena Perez Tejeda from her perspective as a UC Berkeley student working as a Y-PLAN mentor in Oakland.