When the last bell rang to mark the end of the school year, Newtown High School eleventh-grade student Briana Rodriguez didn’t head for the beach or home to watch Netflix. Instead, she enrolled in a summer coding class.
A friend introduced me to Generation Q when I was a sophomore in high school. It was there I built the community that would one day become the lifeline I needed during my transition to becoming a woman.
Community organizing was a value instilled in me at a young age. When I was a teenager, I was a participant in almost all of Queens Community House's afterschool programs, including the first Access for Young Women cohort, a girls' leadership program.
