Hey guys, this is Calvin from the Sac BHC Youth Media team and I just want to share about our visit to the State Capitol last week. For many of us at our team we had visited the State Capitol prior to this visit and what was excited was that Senator Dr. Richard Pan’s staff arranged a visit for us to learn about the legislation and a behind the scenes of a senator’s office. Our first stop was visiting the legislative hearing and we got to see our Senator Pan working on the floor. It was so important for us to learn about the process behind any bill and how hard the senators work to make them into law. On our second stop we got to talk with Senator Pan and take some picture and since he was in session our time with him was cut short, non the less we were excited to meet him since we saw him for the first time at the HEAT press conference a week prior and we saw how he cares for his community as he supported many community orgs and residents of Sacramento on making sure that UC Davis Health System takes Medi-Cal patients back and helps them get the services they need and deserve.
Up next we got to meet a legislative assistant and she share about her experience working with media and in the state capitol. She mentioned that it was an exciting place for her since it is a fast-phase atmosphere and she is constantly challenged to meet the needs of her boss. Gave us a behind the scenes of what we could do in our future if we end up in communications.
Overall we got a chance to almost see how many senators are supported by a team of many and their work most of the times goes unheard and unseen. For us, it was a great way to thank them and share with them our ideas and also learn from them, as an exchange of best practices was the highlight of our meeting.
With what it has to be the highlight of the trip we met an actual real-life newspaper reporter. Her name is Cynthia Moreno who works for Vida En El Valle a Spanish newspaper that serves the Latino community on many issues affecting them. But what was our highlight was been able to hear Cynthia’s story and how she ended up being a reporter. It was a very inspirational story and it also brought us to reconsider our social media activity and how people portray us via social media. Cynthia shared many best practices and experiences that we will implement and share with our team. Over all she made us look at reporters in a way we never knew them.
We also want to extend our gratitude to the people that made this trip a reality. Senator Dr. Richard Pan’s staff Claire Colon and Karen Abrego, without them this would have not been possible. Thanks for allow us the youth to visit our State Capitol in a way we had never seen it. We learn so much just from our 4-hour visit and we hope that this will become an annual visit for others to learn about our legislative system and get to meet awesome people that always work so hard and seldom get or receive their due credit. Thanks so all who made our trip possible.
