What up world! I’m letting you all know that I will be leaving AGE UP and starting a new job as an operations support program manager at Rainier Valley Corps. I know, I know, less frisbee.
Thank you to AGE UP’s, staff, board, volunteers, supporters, fans, coaches, and more importantly, all the little homies that calls the Southend their home and their teams their family. It’s been a long 5 years working with AGE UP, from being at the inception of the First Year Boy’s program to where we are now, operating at a place of abundance- we have PAID coaches at all Southend schools we are supporting, we just finished our 4th iteration of the summer internship, and we are coming on our 9th year of the first year girls program!
AGE UP continually showed me what it looks like to be a trailblazer when it comes to implementing trauma-informed and healing components to coaching and mentoring, but also having our young people make connections with their community, build an understanding how they want to be in the world as well as shape the world into a place they deserve to live in.
For me, working here has been an incredible experience of doing work that matters to me in my community. I’m incredibly grateful for my time at AGE UP, I’m thankful for the work that all the OG employees JWaTTs, Lisa, Kido, Kendra, Gabby, Tugade, Henry, and Lynda did in running programming, building relationships with community members, coaching, and being the backbone for our community and a shoulder that our young people can lean on. Their leadership, dedication, and love was the blueprint in me being AGE UP’s first full time employee. Much appreciation to Sam and Hana! Thank you for letting me stay in the organization and investing in my leadership.
During my 5 years I was able to grow as a social justice organizer, find ways to bridge my love for powerlifting in coaching ultimate frisbee, and of course I got to be in community with 100+ young people. The young people I got to coach, the ones that were a part of our social justice programs, our internships continually brings me hope, they bring joy to the hood that I grew up in, they bring love, safety, and some really good plays to their school teams.
Wow, I’m really leaving. I will leave you all with this: this world is scary, people have been systematically hurt so well, that we often feel the need to be isolated. We feel not good enough for the world, for the relationships we have, for the bodies we are in, for the future that we are building towards. Even on your worst days people love you even when you feel like you cannot love yourself, people will hold you celebrate you to keep on doing the good that you’re going to do and hold you with accountability when you don’t. That’s the world that we deserve to live and we should be striving to build for everyone. Thankfully over the past 13 years the Southend ultimate community let me live in the world I want to live in, and because of that I will continue doing the same.
