The Obama Foundation…… My Eyes are Open

Today officially kicked out off with or Washington D.C college tour. The first activity in our agenda was visiting the Barack Obama Foundation to meet with Micheal Smith. Although we prepared questions to ask him about the foundation and what they do relating to the way we do things at the East Oakland Youth Development Center I was still unsure of what our experience would be like. When got to the Obama foundation we met with very nice people at the front desk and was took a tour of the foundations office. Micheal Smith and the staff at the Foundation gave us background of who they were and how they got to the foundation which opened our eyes, because we were able to see that people raised with different backgrounds, education, and born in different times were all doing great work together.

I learned that the Obama foundation works with youth organizations where there are high populations of African American youth and act as an support system to make those organizations better. They may help with funding, strengthening leadership programs, or getting the organization publicity in that area to get help from their local communities. I enjoyed this experience because I learned that our first Black President was taking productive action on fulfilling his promise of making African American Youth, especially males, feel important and be supported in a society that does not do that for them.

-Akemi