New Year & New Youthful Energy!

OK, admittedly, it has been a long time since any of our KIT staff has had the time to blog here. Behind the scenes we are working on a re-vamp of our website, which will include a new blog, new opportunities for you to interact with your colleagues around the country and (thank goodness) an easier to navigate site map. So, this little blog has been sort of "back burner."

However, something happened this past weekend that I could not resist sharing. Twenty incredible teenagers, leaders and advocates in their own communities around the country, came together for the first National Youth Inclusion Summit. The event was held in Bethesda, MD at Imagination Stage (one of KIT's MEAF National Affiliates) and was initiated by Dan Habib's Including Samuel documentary project, and a team of collaborators. Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation, the National Inclusion Project, Girl Scouts USA, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, KIT, the Victor Paneda Foundation, Fleishman Hillard and others supported the event as funders, facilitators, coordinators and evaluators. Guiding the youth through their work was disability rights advocate and poet Lederick Horne

The young people involved were required to hold a viewing party of Including Samuel in their community. They also completed an extensive application, where they shared their thoughts about inclusion. A panel selected 20 youth to travel to the DC area for the summit, with the goal of creating a national youth-driven message campaign about inclusion.

What a dynamic and inspiring weekend! These young people are already such leaders in their own communities, and bringing them together created an incredible energy. They discussed, created, negotiated, thought and in the end produced two short public service announcements. There is still a lot of work to be done on creating a campaign, but what a great start.

I was so grateful to have the opportunity to participate in the Youth Summit and see that there are strong inclusion advocates right behind us. It makes me feel good about the future of inclusion. A special shout out to the San Diego participants- Malia Rappaport, Tali Rappaport and Jordan Moore.