Health and Empowerment was the focus of the Somerville Teen Empowerment Summit that took place last week in Cambridge. — Photos by Samantha Fleishman

By Patrick McDonagh

“They call me a broke boy.” These words echoed mid-song through the event hall from mics of local rappers involved with The Hip Hop Transformation (THHT). Stories from event organizers and involved teens resonated with these words and the emotions one might feel when called a “broke boy.”

The Somerville Teen Empowerment Summit was held to combat these oppressive feelings: lack of voice, social oppression, depression, and similar community specific problems. Event organizer Heang Ly explains a recognizable common motivation while talking with attendees. Individuals’ motivations for attending often derived from hopes of providing a voice for others where as they had none.

“A lot of them [youth workers] come into this work because of their own personal experiences,” said Ly. “Not feeling like they had a voice, not feeling like they had resources or someone listening to them. That is definitely my story. Coming as a refugee from Cambodia and really trying to figure out the two cultures, and feeling oppressed and not heard.”

Her parents emigrated after surviving the Khmer Rouge regime, most notable for their Cambodian genocide during the mid to late 70s. Ly was five when her refugee family moved in 1983.

After having been asked about her motivations for organizing and attending the Summit, Ly answers, “My parents motivated me. Just what they had to experience, what they had to go through. So just them, having to go through all of that atrocity and genocide, really made me feel like they persevered and were resilient. Why can’t I be the same? Again, at the same time the cultural stuff from them also was part of what made me feel unheard. It’s a double edge sword, but both sort of motivated me. Going to college made me feel like I had a new door step.”

Ly’s motivation for social work and summit organization stems from family perseverance. The Summit was a primarily youth facilitated, community-centric gathering of local health and wellness organizations, social workers, students, and motivated individuals. Funded by the Center for Healthy Communities of Mount Auburn Hospital, the Summit gathered motivated youth active in community support projects for the first event of its funding district’s kind.

The Summit, held at Dante Alighieri Society in Cambridge on March 19, housed the 17th zone out of the Community Health Network Areas (CHNA’s) Mount Auburn funds.

Individuals involved in the program pronounced the acronym as “Chin-aw-17” (CHNA17). Caitlin Abber, a CHNA17 representative, explained: “The regional center for healthy communities out of Mount Auburn Hospital supports a number of Community Health Network Areas across the Massachusetts region. Community Health Network Areas are regional community health coalitions whose mission is to promote community health through identifying local health issues, bringing people together to talk about those issues, strategize on how to address those issues, and implement those strategies; often through grant-making, track it, and share the results.”

Abber works with a community health organization that serves Arlington, Belmont, Waltham, Watertown, Cambridge, and Somerville; each represented at the Summit by youth activists.

Organizations presented their community work. The majority facilitators of the conversation were young people. Young community members presented at the event’s resource fair, discussing their work at table conversations, and with other Mount Auburn grant recipients.

$10,000 was allocated to community organizations by Mount Auburn. Those in the CHNA17 area received the grant after acceptance of their application. The Summit showcased these grant-funded projects and provided opportunity for local social service networking.

CHNA17’s goal coming out of the event was to establish a “robust network of people who are invested in youth work,” Abber said.

The event’s keynote speaker, Johnathan Barry, encouraged attendees to find their motivation. Utilizing a close family member or important person in one’s own life, participants reflected on positive experience to evoke positive emotion, a meditational grounding technique Barry utilizes to combat depression. He addressed the crowd regarding his motivation: “I’m here because of a lot of important people who have come before me, and we’re all here because of a lot of important people that have come before us.”

Similar circular motivation was expressed by Teen Empowerment member and Somerville High School sophomore Odalis Fuentes, 16-year-old mother with a one-year-old baby boy. “I’m a teen mother,” said Fuentes. “I looked into Teen Empowerment because I felt like I had a voice to share, my experience as a teen mom. I feel like in Somerville most of all [attention] is for drug abuse and alcohol abuse, and I feel like teen mothers are set aside and considered less of a problem. Now as years go on I see more teen moms are coming up. I feel like as a teen mom I want to put my voice out there to say, ‘You’re not alone.’”

Fuentes, Ly, Barry, Abber and many others’ trajectory into social services follow a similar path to the field: Service members providing opportunity for others when their opportunity was missing during youth. Goals of building a young network of organizers striving for social change will motivate future funding, opportunities, events, and projects post CHNA17’s summit success.