Roberta F. / Still build your independence

The biggest challenge that Roberta faced was experiencing exclusion, feeling unaccepted, and suffering through homelessness and poverty. One thing that has always kept her going is her faith. Many times she didn’t understand what she, or her twin sister was going through. Much emotion of anger, sadness, distress, anxiety, and fear usually was a common feeling. Although she didn't understand why they were being put through this. She trusted the process and from a very young age, she has always had a close connection and relationship with her high power in Jesus Christ.strangers. As a teenager, she committed herself to the church and she would spiritually fight for her family to end the destruction, and suffering they were all facing.

I felt a spiritual healing working in my family and then miracles started happening, my family and I were no longer homeless, and my sister and I were able to reunite and live with our parents.

The fact that she wasn’t home with family was depressing. What brought her comfort while in care was having a friend. Being in the system what helped her was having a single friend, a social worker, a life coach, and anyone else who was willing to listen to her and be there for her. When she was a child and as an adult, being in the system has had a profound impact on her. Making new friends at school or through the church or in my neighborhood was another thing that helped her deal with her situation.

Keep going, enjoy being a kid, or teenager, enjoy being you every day, only focus on what's in your control everything else let it be. One day you will have control over your future,start planning and preparing for where you want to be in the next 10 years and don’t lose vision of that sight.

When it comes to her successes and what makes her proud, This year alone makes her the most proud. She was awarded two prestigious scholarships this year by California State University, Long Beach's Journalism and Public Relations program. She also won in a raffle one whole free year of rent by one simple wish. She is thrilled within the next six months, she will have officially graduated from college and onto her next big chapter in life, and for that, She is so proud of herself and has made a huge accomplishment as she’s been working toward this goal for the last five years, since she was 18.

Roberta graduated from college in december. She see herself in the next five years being more established in her life, having nice things that she’s earned. Hopefully being on a big stage, and sharing her mission and personal stories with others. That will encourage, inspire, and power our rising generation that will have such a impact on society one day becoming the future. Where she’s right there in it all, apart of the change.