This summer, I had the privilege of helping lead two sessions of the USC Annenberg Third Space Youth Institute, welcoming high school students from across California to campus for a week of growth, learning, and discovery. We hosted students from Los Angeles County, the Inland Empire, and Coachella Valley. These students arrived with bold ideas, big dreams, and powerful voices that too often go unheard.
The USC Annenberg Center for Third Space Thinking hosted a Third Space Thinking Leadership Summit in October, bringing together thought leaders in education and industries to discuss the future of work and how we can bridge the skills gap for youth entering the workforce.
The Third Space Youth Institute (TSYI) completed its fifth year empowering underserved high school students with comprehensive training in soft skills development for problem solving that will distinguish them in any career path.
Earlier this semester, I had an amazing opportunity to meet with esteemed members of the Azteca Foundation, an organization dedicated to fostering the empowerment of Mexico’s youth through education, nurturing Mexico’s future leaders for a brighter tomorrow.
The summer of 2023 served as a testament to the Center for Third Space Thinking’s unwavering commitment to nurturing leadership potential in marginalized youth. The Third Space Youth Institute had over 100 participants from various school districts, including the Riverside County Office of Education, Migrant Education; Los Angeles County Office of Education, Migrant Education; and Wallis Annenberg High School. This year marked an exciting expansion, as it was the first time Third Space collaborated with the Los Angeles Unified School District’s City of Angels School, which was made possible through a grant from the Black Student Achievement Program.
After a year online due to the COVID pandemic, the USC Annenberg Third Space Youth Institute (TSYI) returned to campus this past summer, hosting more than 250 low-income and migrant students from throughout California.
Recently, the USC Annenberg Center for Third Space Thinking hosted two professional development workshops with service organization Working Wardrobes, in which the participants learned about the five ACE-IT attributes and how to solve organizational problems using the ACE-IT framework.
Recent reports from the New York Times show us that people of different races do not have the same risk factors for self-harm. In the past 20 years, self-reported suicide attempts rose nearly 80 percent among black adolescents. In this article, we explore a young black teenager’s intense mental health journey.
On March 15, 2020 the world was forced to adapt. Healthcare systems across the world had to learn how to manage the Coronavirus. The Covid pandemic shaped different systems around the world, changing the way we live, work, and learn. Now that the world is returning to some form of pre-pandemic normalcy, we are all going through another transition of adaptation. In March, we had to learn how to work remotely and socialize virtually, but adapting back to a world we yearned for during COVID isn’t as easy as it may have seemed.
“The world that you will enter as a professional is a whole lot different than the world I entered years ago,” exclaimed Dr. Ernest Wilson, founder of the USC Annenberg Center for Third Space Thinking, to a virtual room of more than 50 high school students.
The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the learning of just about every high school student. Students have endured grueling months of online learning, Zoom calls, and independent work. This year, the Third Space Youth Institute also had to adapt to distant learning, but our students still showed up on Zoom every day eager to learn about how to leverage their soft skills for college and career success.