FCC Teen Staff Bios

 

 

Princess Jasmine Clayborne is currently a senior at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School. She participates in extra curricular activities such as JROTC; Teens Run DC, media crew, and Peer mediator club. Princess has made it a point in her life not to let her past or her childhood affect her future endeavors. She believes that "tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live" (Robert Kennedy). For the first time in her high school career she has made honor roll with a 3.47, which has made her hopes for a future even more refined and made her more focused. When she gets to college she will have the pleasure of being the first in her family to attend, and make something of herself. Princess is currently in the process of applying to college, and would like the opportunity to go to a historically black college or university (HBCU). After graduating from college she hopes to do something for her community.

Princess has kept a positive outlook on life, and is excited to have been afforded the opportunity to work with the young women’s project Foster Care Campaign. Being adopted at a young age, and then separated from her brother, who is still in the system, has given her the passion and drive for her job. Princess says, “My goal is not to take out my childhood frustrations regarding my brother, but to help so that other youth don’t have to go through that kind of separation.” During her time with FCC so far, she has been helping prepare for a hearing with Councilmember Tommy Wells, and considers it a great honor. In her time with FCC, her aspiration is to help foster youth have a stable home, and to be surrounded by people who love them.

Trey L. Jones was born in 1990 at General Hospital, and raised in DC and Maryland. He now lives in Catholic Charities Independent Living Program and will begin attending the University of the District of Columbia in 2010. Trey began working for the Young Women's Project in November 2009 and works with the Foster Care Campaign. Trey also does community service work, and played basketball and played with his high school band. Trey plans to be a great singer one day.

Sarah Ocran attends Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School for Public Policy and is her senior year. Sarah has been in the foster care system since 2003, after being taken away from her mom and leaving her grandma’s custody. Because of the separation from her family, she wishes for guidance and love and is looking for permanency. She lives in a group home, where many of the residents have no connection with their families.Living in a group home has opened her eyes. She believes that the foster care system sets youth up to fail, and at 18, does not know what will happen when she leaves the system. She has come to the understanding that people come in to your life for a reason and a purpose. And though you may not no what it is, that person was sent by  God to do what ever it was that they was sent to do. She has also come to understand that she’s here for a reason. Despite what Sarah has been through, she has been involved with a lot in her community. She sets high leadership standards for her peers. She has been able to take care of herself and has been doing things that she never would have been able to.  She is the vice president of the Foster Care Campaign, and is in student Government. She has learned to never let her situation make her, but to make her situation. So in some odd way her odds have made me the wonderful young woman that she is today.

 

Nakea Paige is 17 years old and has been in the foster care system for the past three years. Nakea was born in Washington, DC, but currently lives in Maryland in a foster home. She attends Cesar Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy. She is a senior and is doing very well in all of her classes. Nakea has many dreams of going to college to major in chemical or biomedical engineering to later go to graduate school and pursue a career as a pharmacist.

Nakea has been working on the Foster Care Campaign since the summer of 2006. She says that the motivation and dedication from her peers and supervisors makes her continue her work at FCC. She feels that people need to be informed and that people within the system need a voice that will never give up on them when the money is not right or times are stressful. Nakea also believes that she can inform everyone on the issues of the foster care system and encourage people to stand up and say that things need to be changed. The biggest issue to Nakea within the system is aging out and what happens to youths when they age out. Nakea would like to see these things changed by the government putting restriction and new laws on what happens to youths when they age out. She wants it to be so that there is housing no matter what your situation is, health insurance is provided and that all of youth’s basic living needs are met by a dedicated support system. Nakea says she will contribute to this by informing people of this issue on a daily basis and make sure that everyone knows about what people are afraid to talk about.

T’ Kara Plater is an extraordinary person here at FCC. T’ Kara is 17 years old and is expecting an 18th birthday soon. She is a foster care resident and works at the Young Women’s Project with other peers to help come up with solutions and to add or amend some of the regulations pertaining to all foster care residents. In T’ Kara’s spare time, she like to write poetry, play soccer, hang with family and friends, do hair, and help out in community events. T’ Kara is a very helpful person who dedicates her time to FCC when she can. She is graduating from Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School this coming summer in 2010. Also this coming summer, this will be her second year anniversary working with the Young Women’s Project (Foster Care Campaign).   

Brittany Silver, a seventeen-year-old senior at Woodrow Wilson SHS, is the President of the Foster Care Campaign. She is a motivated, determined, and courageous young lady who loves to work on the campaign and helping others. She is strongly opinionated, and loves to discuss social justice issues. Being exposed to the Foster Care Campaign and youth in the system, has helped her to grow and to develop into the young lady that she is. 

She is currently applying to college: her first choice is Columbia University to study Political Science as a major. She has many goals in life, one of them being that she wants to be a billionaire by the age of twenty-five. She plans to own several of her own businesses, which she will use to help organize, create, and develop her own college. She wants to design her own school, with an amazing curriculum, and is recruiting people who would want to be apart of her “revolution on the school system.” Along with her goal of opening her own college, she also wants to open up a chain of schools, mentoring and tutoring programs, and charities.

Helping the community is important to her, and since she has been apart of the Foster Care Campaign she constantly learns different methods to help the community, while learning important lessons in life. One of these lessons include, that a person has to be patient, compromise, and be persistent to not only lead or be a part of change, but to actually see it. The Foster Care Campaign is important to Brittany because she recognizes the system’s many flaws, and she knows that she wouldn’t be who she is or where she is if it wasn’t for her family. She believes that everyone deserves an equal opportunity to be successful, and she loves to be apart of the foster care system’s evolution to greatness.

Loretta Singletary is 20 years old, and started working for YWP in November of 2009, and is apart of a Foster Care Campaign. They teach youth to advocate for themselves, they also teach youth there rights while in care. She met wonderful people who are full of laugh and joy. She attends Continental Academy Home School Program. Her most important accomplishment with YWP is that she learned so much more about her rights in the foster care system. She is also learning how to advocate for herself more. She is going to be participating in a hearing with City Council on DC Older Foster Youth. Loretta is currently in the foster care system and resides at Fihankra Place Inc Independent Living Program. Loretta is the oldest out of her 2 other siblings. Loretta will emancipate out of foster care in 2010 and is nervous but kind of excited to be on the road to independence.    

 

 

Ravon Stewart is a nineteen year old youth staff member here at FCC and a graduate of Woodrow Wilson SHS. After being referred by a former YWP youth staff member he began working with FCC in the fall of 2008. During his time here at YWP, Ravon has been a diligent worker, consistently increasing his knowledge of the foster care system. Though he isn’t in the foster care system, he advocates for foster youth. He has testified before city council, interviewed youth and he has researched various topics involving the foster care system and its foster youth.

Ravon is currently preparing for training on how to file a grievance report and how to start a residence council. He believes in what he is doing at YWP. He loves learning, he loves his peers that he works with and he loves the fact that he is making a positive impact on his community. This young man is maturing by the day, hoping to inspire anyone, youth or adult to work their way towards success.    

 

 

Nina Thompson, a non-foster care youth, attends Cesar Chaves Public Charter High School. There, she is currently a senior and age 17. She joined the YWP famly in March of 2009. She participates in the Foster Care Campaign. Nina works on the “aging-out” aspect of the research the team has been doing. With YWP, she has accomplished many things, from public speaking to meeting city council members. She has learned more and more about the system each and every day. Overall, Nina is very excited about what the futureholds for her here at FCC.