Christmas Cheer

With all of the hardships that face our world today it is amazing to be working for an organization that gives back and gives me the opportunity to help our youth grow and develop. City Year has allowed me to become a leader, and role model to the high school aged youth of Philadelphia. For those of you who do not know, Philadelphia has one of the worst schools systems in the country, there are seniors in high school who do not know their basic time tables, Philadelphia is also plagued with one of the highest murder rates in the country as well, we are fast apporching 400 for the year, basically youth of Philadelphia have a tough road ahead of them if they want to have any sort of chance to go to college. In Philadelphia many youth are lost to gangs, drugs, poverty, and violence and my team at City Year help run a program called City Heroes, that takes 150 high school aged youth and teach them leadership skills, civic awareness, civic engagement, and helps develop them as young people to stand up for what they believe in, to make a change in their communities and to believe in themselves and the results so far have been so amazing that I dont think there are words to describe the magic I see happening in these kids. Yesterday was our first community service event with these high schoolers and we did 8 hours of service, painting and cleaning up a run down recreation center. By the end of the day the kids were laughing, making new friends, cheering, and most importantly getting wonderful compliments from people on the streets on what a wonderful job they are doing and that they are giving a community hope. These kids are are learning what it means to be part of a communtiy and that they can make a difference. I dont think this blog is doing justice to what I saw in these high schoolers, I have never seen so many young people so happy to be doing service, so happy be with a diverse group of people who they now call their friends, who they will soon call their family. I am so proud and so honored to be a part of this movement, to teach these kids that there is hope for the youth of Philly. So, my joy this Christmas goes out to my new corps of 150 students from all over Philly, you are giving Philly a reason to believe, and you make me so proud to be your leader this year.

A letter to the editor concerning SEPTA

Public Transportation is impossible in this city. Whether its the station smelling like stale pee, the subway smelling like weed because the kid right next to you decides that smoking a joint, blunt, or pipe on public transportation is ok, or you wait for almost an hour and a half for the only bus in the city that can get you home, or the rats on the Broad Street platform are the size Chiuahuahs, SEPTA is horrific. What makes matters even worse is that because I am a part of City Year and SEPTA gives us our trans-passes to us for free, it gives the green light to volunteer us corps members to clean up SEPTA stations and stops. Now if you think you have it bad try spending two hours mopping a subway station that is full of pigeon doo doo, homeless doo doo, garbage, weaves that are the length of Rhode Island, and goodness knows how many drug parafanalia....it is N-A-S-T-Y and I do it all for the sake of a free pass, and all in the name of giving back to the communities of Philadelphia. Nuts to that, there comes a time when I have to be selfish and refuse to give back, to not clean up doo doo, put down the mop and say #*%#!#!*&%$ you SEPTA!!!

Officially Sucked In and wondering why I want to display my life story online

So I have officially started a blog and really I am wondering why the heck I did such a thing. For I long time I felt as if this was kind of self-centered (dont worry family I do not think such a thing anymore) because it was all about me, kind of annoying because people tend to get to self absorbed. All of this changed thanks to my wonderful aunts and mother. While I was in Key West with the most wonderful people ever aka my Silva aunts and my mamma, they were always talking about their blog and how they whole family was using them and yadda yadda yadda and I thought hmmmm maybe its not so bad after all. So, I searched for my Auntie Chesca's blog because I wanted to see the pics from Key West and I got hooked, not only from hers but I was able to see the rest of the family's blogs. I loved it because I will now be able to keep in touch with family who is all over the world and who I dont get to talk to very often. I have started this blog (and I am sure I will be obsessed with blogging) because I want to keep in touch with my family because being in Key West with them made me realize how lucky I am to have such an amazing, generous, crazy, and kind family and how much I need to keep in touch with them because they are what matter the most to me. So, here is my life online and it is officially all about me (yes its ALL ABOUT ME). Cheers!