CLASS OF 2011SENIOR BACCALAUREATE CEREMONY

LONG BEACH POLYTECHNIC HIGH SCHOOL

LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA

INSPIRATIONAL KEYNOTE SPEECH: "GIVING BACK TO YOUR COMMUNITY IS YOUR HIGHEST CALLING"

BY: LYDIA A. HOLLIE, JD, MAEDCO-CHAIR, LB DHHS WEED AND SEED STEERING COMMITTEE

JUNE 12, 2011

2011 SENIOR BACCALAUREATE CEREMONY - LONG BEACH POLYTECHNIC HIGH SCHOOLINSPIRATIONAL KEYNOTE SPEECH

BY: LYDIA A. HOLLIE, JD, MAEDCO-CHAIR, LB DHHS WEED AND SEED STEERING COMMITTEE

Good Afternoon Everyone,

Foremost, I thank God for my life and the opportunity to serve my community.

Graduates, through determination and hard work you have earned the right to be a member of this Class of 2011. Congratulations on a well-deserved accomplishment! This commencement will be one of many successes that you will achieve in your lifetime. Enjoy and cherish this moment.

Let Your Light Shine with Power, Purpose, and Boldness

This is an exciting time for you. You are full of anticipation and somewhat apprehensive about what the future may hold. In her 1992 book, A Return to

Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles, Marianne Williamson made an insightful observation: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” That statement is profound for this reason: once you have come to terms with the power that is within, you automatically raise the bar of expectation, you achieve the impossible, and simultaneously demonstrate to others that everything is possible with the determination to overcome any obstacle and accomplish your purpose.

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Booker T. Washington once said, “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.” Mr. Washington did not allow that peculiar institution called slavery to subdue, limit, nor deny him of his rightful place as a contributing citizen of this country. Most notably, he established the Tuskegee University in Alabama, which he led during his presidency in 1881 to become one of the leading institutions of higher learning in the United States. Graduates, I urge you to take special note of this fact: Anything that is worth achieving will not come easy nor without a price. The obstacles and roadblocks that you faced to reach today’s milestone is a preview of what you can expect to contend with in your quest to live your lives to the fullest and serve your community with honor and respect.

Serving Your Community means Giving Back to Your Community

You will soon learn that living an abundant life includes giving back to your community. The Former Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill, succinctly emphasized that point, "You make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give." In the spirit of community service, an anonymous philosopher reminds us to, “never underestimate the power of your actions…with one small gesture you can change a person’s life. God puts us all of in each others' lives to impact one another in some way.” Graduates, from this day forward, let your life be a living embodiment of this declaration: The destiny of society is found within the power of your decisions.

Life’s Equation is the Formula for Giving Back to Your Community

The milestone you have reached today has been both exciting and life-affirming. You must now prepare yourselves with the ability and confidence to think with greater depth and breadth about how to effectively reconfigure our communities in a lasting and meaningful way. And you can only prepare yourselves through study and scholarship, leadership, and community service.

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Peace Ambassador Claudette Powers summarizes life into this simple equation, “Events plus Responses equals Outcomes.” With this equation in mind, I would like to share with you how I have been giving back to my community.

The Events in My Community. I have fond memories of growing up in Central Long Beach, but since my childhood, the neighborhoods worsened dramatically. This area lies north to Hill Street, south to Anaheim Street, east to Cherry Avenue, and west to the L.A. River. With a population of approximately 46,000 residents, one-third lives below the federal poverty level with an annual median household income of $21,000 for a family of four, and over one-half of this community survives on $15,000 a year or less. Over one-half have not completed high school and less than ten percent are high school graduates. As you know, Long Beach Polytechnic High School is an oasis in the middle of this section of Central Long Beach. Despite the best efforts of concerned community members and civic officials, for nearly 30 years, this area suffered from the notoriety of having the highest violent crime rates in the city of Long Beach. Over those years, I have attended far more funerals than weddings, watched others enter the jail and prison system, and observed the devastation on the families (including my own) and neighborhoods where crime scenes were a regular occurrence. These conditions have always troubled me and compelled me to initiate proactive measures to permanently end this negative cycle.

The great Cesar Chavez spoke of the interdependent relationship between the community member and the community’s destiny, "we cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community...Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own." Implicit in that observation is a depth of selflessness that must be present if civic engagement is essential to your purpose. Professor Thomas Ehrlich, a senior scholar at the

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Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, defines civic engagement as "working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values, and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes." He goes on to say that, "A morally and civically responsible individual recognizes himself or herself as a member of a larger social fabric and therefore consider social problems to be at least partly his or her own; such an individual is willing to see the moral and civic dimensions of issues, to make and justify informed moral and civic judgments, and to take action when appropriate."

How Did I Respond to the Events? I renewed my mind and changed my thinking about my role as a member of this community and my purpose in life. According to Physicist and Nobel Laureate Albert Einstein, "You can't solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it." My response to those overwhelming community conditions was driven by the realization that I have a moral and ethical responsibility to make a difference in the quality of life in my hometown.

Since 1996, I have given back to this community by volunteering my mind, talent, and time, while simultaneously working as an elementary educator and fulfilling higher educational goals. And in 2002, I became a relentless advocate for effective and humane approaches to address youth and gang violence prevention and intervention, specifically in the area of building community capacity and empowering its members to work collaboratively to change systems and policies to reduce violence, save lives, and restore neighborhoods. When I served as Chairperson of the city's Human Relations Commission, a comprehensive report on the problem of youth and gang violence was written, approved by community and civic leadership, including an endorsement by the Long Beach Police Department, and unanimously

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approved by the Long Beach City Council in 2003. That effort led to the formation of the Long Beach Youth and Gang Violence Prevention Task Force in 2004, which focused on Central Long Beach. While chairing the Task Force, two grants were successfully spearheaded, the U.S. Department of Justice Weed & Seed grant ($1 million) and the Long Beach Gang Reduction Intervention Program ($400,000) from the Governor‘s Office. The Weed and Seed Steering Committee, along with city support staff and the Long Beach Police Department, engaged in programmatic strategic planning that established effective violence prevention approaches to violent crime, gang activity, youth development, and community restoration in the Central Long Beach area.

What Outcomes have the Community Experienced? Since its inception in 2007, the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services Weed and Seed Program community residents and partnering agencies have benefited the Central Area, including: (1) a 24% drop in violent crime since 2007, which substantially contributed to the city's overall reduction in violent crime to its lowest levels in nearly 40 years; (2) a reduction in gang activity and truancy citations, (3) the development of a citywide Comprehensive Reentry and Employment Services Strategic Plan and demonstration project designed to aid juvenile and adult re-entrants from California's camps, jails, and prisons in making a seamless transition back to the community, while minimizing the likelihood of re-incarceration, (4) sponsoring parent empowerment workshops in English, Khmer, and Spanish, from which graduates become community parent mentors, (5) established a Youth Leadership Program and curriculum, currently developing 25 teenagers into tomorrow's leaders in the areas of social, environmental, and economic justice, and (6) incubated the PEACE GARDEN at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park , a recent recipient of second place honors at the 2011 Neighborhood of the Year awards in the Multi-Neighborhood division. Within one year and under the watchful eye of community elders, this

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community garden was designed and built by Central Area youth while simultaneously strengthening intergenerational relationships. There are several Weed and Seed Program youth leaders who are graduating from Long Beach Polytechnic and other area schools, including: (Jazmine Franklin, Kasmere Duffey, Ashley Kearn, S. Robert Rath, Jarath Sok, Jericho Williams; and Genesis Higareda, Sophall Serth, Rin Chhnoun, Erica Vargas, and Eric Vargas). The Weed and Seed Program and PEACE GARDEN have received local and national recognition because these young people changed their consciousness, immersed themselves in the community, and as a result, directly contributed to reducing violence, saving lives, and restoring Central Area neighborhoods.

The Class of 2011 will Elevate Long Beach to a National Model City

Nearly ten years have lapsed since I started this journey, and I am grateful to see the fruits that giving back to the community have made possible. I have great confidence that your advocacy will raise the bar of expectation and take our city to an even higher level of community engagement and civic action for the purposes of reducing violence to zero, completing the restoration of our neighborhoods, and establishing Long Beach as a model city throughout the nation. If this vision is to be realized, then giving back to your community means to be fully persuaded that public service is a ministry of the highest calling as well as the epitome of visionary leadership, boldness to speak truth to power, compassion for the least among you, and humility in knowing that love will always conquers hate. In the world that you will inherit, exemplify these characteristics in your conversation and lifestyle, and you will become choreographers and facilitators that seek to orchestrate a symphonic, harmonious, and holistic approach to developing the human infrastructure in an ever-changing world. As 21st century leaders, your job is to inform, educate, encourage, and empower communities so that they transform into growing, thriving, prospering, and safe environments where people will be

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drawn to come and live, work, visit, and worship.

In closing, more than one-third of the Long Beach population is 24 years and under, which means that you are its most significant constituency. You are valuable, important and necessary to this city's path to greatness. Use your strong moral and ethical fiber, boldness, courage, and leadership to make this

city a better place to live in harmony and peace. You are a beacon of light that will shine through the challenges before for you and brighten the lives of others around you. Your city needs you, and its future is in your hands.

Again, congratulations Class of 2011. May God abundantly bless each of you in your present and future endeavors.

Thank you.

LYDIA A. HOLLIE, JD, MAED

Lydia A. Hollie is a champion for reducing youth violence and transforming troubled neighborhoods into model communities. Her efforts are inspired by the awareness that the well-being of families determines whether children fail or succeed and whether a community declines or prospers. A Long Beach native, Hollie volunteered eight years on the Long Beach Human Relations Commission, including a two-year distinguished term (2001-2003) as Chairperson. Dr. Hollie then served as Chairperson of the Long Beach Youth and Gang Violence Prevention Task Force (2004-2009) and spearheaded the successful acquisition of both the U.S. Department of Justice Weed & Seed grant ($1 million) and the Long Beach CalGRIP grant ($400,000) to reduce violent crime, address gang violence prevention, youth development, and community restoration in the Central Long Beach area. During her four-year tenure as Co-Chair of the Long Beach Department of Health & Human Services Weed and Seed Steering Committee, the target community achieved a 24% decrease in violent crime, which helped to reduce the city's overall violent crime rate to its lowest levels in nearly 40 years. Reducing violence, saving lives, restoring neighborhoods, and revitalizing communities are are chief objectives of her mission.An advocate for intellectual and professional development, Hollie is a 2010 Passing The Mantle Fellow from the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture. She holds an AA in International Business, BA in Political Science (with dual Minors in African Studies, and Social & Political Economy), MA in Education, and a Juris Doctor. A recipient of numerous awards and recognitions for her extensive involvement and volunteer service to the community, Hollie is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist at various venues, and guest lecturer at higher education forums. Recently, Dr. Lydia Hollie was elected by the Lynwood Teachers Association as the representative on the California Teachers Association State Council for a two-year term to address statewide educational policy.Dr. Hollie is a passionate believer in the resilient, transformative, and evolutionary nature of the human spirit to yield progressive change to one’s circumstances and ascend beyond the insurmountable.