My name is Khai Tran and I am a college bound senior graduating from Thurgood Marshall Academic High School. I will be attending San Francisco State University in the fall. My school is a small community with about 500-700 students. Often We are labeled with a bad reputation as being dangerous, uneducated and have no passion for academics. Growing up in a low income environment I've seen that people often associate negative beliefs with low income neighborhoods. But guess what? We are far from that, the students from Thurgood Marshall are smart, articulate and has the drive and passion to pursue careers in a variety of fields, ranging from Anthropology to Law Enforcement and even Visual and Performing Arts! But being as young as we are it is extremly hard to find a meaningful job that we are interested in. This is why I am advocating the idea to create ongoing internships that will allow misrepresented youth the oppurtunity to pursue and gain experience in their desired career fields. This will provide jobs to the youth in low income neighborhoods and will essentially provide valuable career experiences. My idea is to create and establish the belief that regardless of your social status you are still capable to achieve great things. The way I envisioned this idea to play out is that we have a central building that funds and research newly available internships during the school year and summer time. After that the information can be relayed to branches spread out in the city, located by low income schools like Thurgood Marshall and Burton. There these Branches from the organization will do outreaches to the schools to potentially hire young adults that want to work and gain jobs skills. I want to advocate strongly and emphasize the importance of having a variety of career fields that will be available to the youth. It is extremely important to make this idea into reality because it will create a dedicated, strong and passionate bunch of young men and women.
I immigrated from Vietnam in 1997 with my family. At that time I was only three years old and had no clue on what had happened. My Father was a soldier in the war and his involvement with the US military allow my entire family to come to America. I am now currently 18 years old and I an about to graduate from Thurgood Marshall Academic High School. In the Fall I plan to attend San Francisco State University and major in Criminal Justice. I have a strong passion for volunteering, advocating for change and one day aspire to become a Police Officer.
