While attending John A. Ferguson Senior High School, a friend invited Eleazar Padilla to join The Children’s Trust Youth Advisory Committee.
“We find that when we give our young people the opportunity to serve their communities, to advocate for their communities, it is incredible the transformation within a community,” Danielle Barreras, associate director of community engagement for The Children’s Trust, said.
The Youth Advisory Committee focuses on service, advocacy, and hands-on community engagement to help families throughout South Florida. Padilla said he was quickly hooked.
“I saw a lot of people starting to worry about making sure that they can push for some form of citizenship. They’re worried about their family members who were trying to immigrate over. My thought was, ‘how do I make sure that people aren’t scared?’,” he said.
Youth Advisory Committee experience changed his life
Padilla quickly became vice president of the West Kendall branch, tackling tough topics centering around local elections and homelessness. But it was a prison tour, where he saw a teenager locked up in an adult prison, that led him to double major in sociology and political science.
“It blew my mind that there was a minor in a facility with adults, and that person was being isolated because they couldn’t be held in the same areas that others were. That drew me to working in juvenile justice,” he said.
Now a college graduate, Padilla has taken his activism to Capitol Hill. He’s working with U. S. House members to push for education reform and labor rights.
“Every day I go to work and I see the Washington Monument as I go in, and I see the United States Capitol, and I’m inside and I’m doing my work, and I know, wow, I’m at the center of it all,” he said.
Padilla said his early work with the Youth Advisory Committee helped him carve out a clear purpose.
“The future is just making sure that I can keep fighting, keep giving back to my community as much as I can,” he said.
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