“Partnering with Resilient by Design is bringing our Y-PLAN work to a new and exciting level of regional impact with resiliency leaders, schools and young people across the Bay Area. We are  working together to lift up youth voice and young people's lived experience as core to designing and re-imagining resilient cities.” – Dr. Deborah McKoy, Executive Director, Center for Cities + Schools, UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley’s Center for Cities + Schools and the Resilient by Design | Bay Area Challenge, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, kicked off the spring Y-PLAN Youth Challenge on Tuesday, January 30th at the Bay Area Metro Center in San Francisco. Before the formal event even started, Cathy Simon, architect of the Bay Area Metro Center, led a private building tour for Y-PLAN students from Richmond’s Kennedy High School.

Following the tour, the event itself opened with remarks from Allison Brooks, Chair of the Resilient by Design Executive Board, Dr. Deborah McKoy, Executive Director of the Center for Cities + Schools, and Dr. La RueMoore, Kennedy High School’s Information Technology Academy Lead. Next, Y-PLAN students from the leadership team of Kennedy’s IT Academy presented their visions for a resilient future that they devised with their classmates during this fall’s implementation of the Y-PLAN. After the formal presentations, the students from Kennedy High School, as well as their peers from East Palo Alto Phoenix Academy who have just begun implementing Y-PLAN this spring, had a chance to interact directly with roughly two dozen professionals from Resilient by Design teams and partners. Together, the youth and adults shared their experiences with personal, professional, and community resilience, and their own roles in designing a more resilientfuture for us all.