Youth Voices | Jayda Dotson

My name is Jayda Dotson, I am an 18 year old senior attending Uplift High School in Chicago and a member of the Chicago Housing Authority Youth Council with the Mikva Challenge Foundation. I attended a talk with Dr. Eve L. Ewing at the Chicago Humanities Festival on Sunday, October 27 during which she discussed racism, schools closings on the Southside and much more. When we first got to the event, I noticed right away that me and my friend were the only ones there to represent “the youth”. This made me think that more youth need exposure to events such as these because it challenged me to think beyond my personal opinions and feelings regarding the political decisions that have both been made or are awaiting approval.

The discussion continued onto other topics and a lot of what was said began to resonate with me more. Dr. Ewing described having a hard time being a Black women writing for Marvel and much more. With each point that she made she gave examples to emphasize them. Making it really personal, going into depth on things that both she and others within the room agreed with kept the audience engaged. When talking about the schools, which was indeed a personal connection for me she said, “We have all of the resources to tackle poverty stricken schools; summer jobs for youth, those coming out of incarceration and much more, but we must have the moral will to fulfill these issues. We must discuss poverty and CPS Funding with Chicago representatives."

This also surprised because I was expecting another speaker to blame other people and everything surrounding them, but what I heard was quite the opposite which was a nice change. Dr. Ewing took some accountability saying that we as a city Chicago may not have what we necessarily want but we have some key resources to access what we may need.

This discussion was needed and deeply appreciated. It gave me insight about things that I never even thought about; from retired CPS teachers, to currently employed special learning development teachers. It changed my perspective that only students, and some parents, cared about schools, education and resources outside of school. I want to say thank you to Mikva Challenge (Marie Tapp especially) for helping set this up to even give us the opportunity to sit in on such a powerful discussion. It was a pleasure writing this. Thank you again for this exposure and opportunity.

Jayda Dotson

My name is Jayda Dotson I am very outgoing and goal oriented a senior at Uplift Academy with a deep love for Culinary Arts with hopes of opening my own restaurant one day.

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