Since the age of 3, Judith Sierra has participated in a variety of programs and classes at A Resource in Service Equality (ARISE) Center in the south of Texas. In 1998, her parents enrolled her in ARISE’s Early Childhood Program, which is designed to help toddlers be successful when they enter the school system.
As the daughter of immigrants and a first-generation American, Judith continued to be part of ARISE’s programs. As an elementary school student, she participated in the ARISE English Language Development Class (ELDC) where, according to Lourdes Flores, president of ARISE Support Center, Judith’s grounding in life, clear thinking and family support helped. All of this enabled Judith to face challenges later in life.
For the last few years, Judith has been volunteering at ARISE in both the summer and ELDC programs, where she has mentored children from her Rio Grande Valley community and parents who might be alienated from the school system.
“Those who surround me, who go through a public school system, are not prepared for what is to come in college,” Judith says. “Most of the kids from my community have parents who did not even graduate from middle school.”
Judith describes her own struggle as a student with math homework and papers due and nobody to help her through the process as the main motivator for her work with ARISE.
“Even though my parents did not know how to help with such math problems or even writing techniques, they would always do their best…just to help me get through one math problem,” Judith recalls. “I experienced the hardships of being a first-generation student trying to get to college.”
Next year, Judith will graduate from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg, Texas with a degree in psychology. Later, she plans to pursue her master’s degree.
“I want to go back to ARISE and start working with families there,” Judith says. “I’ve been a volunteer for six years and I have seen a lot of need in the kids and in the families.”
In addition to her work with tutoring at ARISE, Judith has been a leader in the “Texas Can Do Better” campaign, which blocked 89 pieces of state legislation directed against immigrants, who, as she explains, are a vulnerable group.
She also has assisted ARISE several times in their “Get-Out-To-Vote” campaigns as a response to the “vital need in South Texas for civic participation on the part of our immigrant citizens,” Flores says. “For this effort, as well as her involvement in the ‘Texas Can Do Better’ campaign, Judith understood her role in bringing about policy wins.”
“There is a lot of necessity and what better for us than to speak out for those people,” Judith says. “As we see through the news, one of the major targets of [the 2016 presidential campaign] is immigration and immigration reform…There is going to be a lot of interest for Hispanics this presidential election.”
Each story in the “America’s Next Leaders 2014” special series features a young person who contributes to his or her community and who has received a Sargent Shriver Youth Warriors Against Poverty Leadership Award. Each year, Marguerite Casey Foundation, which publishes Equal Voice News, honors young people with this award. The Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network nominated Sierra for the award.