Youth2Leaders holds vender fair benefitting Kern County students

A fundraiser that aimed to support Central Valley students in furthering their education was held in Southwest Bakersfield on Sat, Sept 2.

Transcript

00:00 a fundraiser held in southwest Bakersfield over the holiday weekend to

00:04 support Central Valley students and furthering their education with more on

00:08 how it will impact the community. Here's 23 abc's Ruby Rivera with our

00:11 current kindness. Youth leaders have held fundraisers before, but event

00:15 organizers say this is the first time where they've been able to partner with

00:18 all local vendors saying Saturday's event is a way to not only support

00:22 students and their education, but as a way to get more vendors involved in

00:25 their community. Us being a smaller non profit starting here in Kern County,

00:30 being able to partner with cubbies, who's another local um business and

00:35 organization is truly amazing to where it's benefiting both parties.

00:38 Executive director for youth to leaders Gabriel Adame says partnering locally

00:43 allows them to better achieve their goal of connecting with the community

00:46 and is grateful for the vendors who came out in support of their cause.

00:49 Adame says attractions like face painting, a bounce house and the DJ

00:53 were important to add as he says a variety is key when trying to better

00:57 connect with the community. Many of the vendors I spoke with said they were

01:00 grateful for events like this as it allows them to expand as well to get

01:04 myself involved to participate in events like this one. They're helping

01:09 young kids to the education. So for me it's very important to be out there in

01:16 the community for these people. Local face painter Maria Rodriguez says being

01:20 a part of education related events is important to her as she says she didn't

01:24 have the chance to graduate and wants not only her kids but the younger

01:27 generation to have that opportunity to do things like jobs they don't want to

01:31 do. So they study and they continue going to school and they be somebody in

01:35 this world will probably have better leaders in this community. A portion of

01:39 saturday's profits will go directly toward youth to leaders efforts.

01:42 Program coordinator fellow for youth to leaders Eric Plata Torres says being

01:46 able to give back to students is important to him as he was once in their

01:50 shoes. Prior to his current position, Plata Torres says he was originally in

01:54 the non profits migrant program. It brings me a lot of joy and it's a very

01:57 rewarding feeling helping out other students where I was in their shoes at

02:02 one point and going out to the high schools and helping out them, helping

02:07 them out, apply for their respective financial aid application. It's just a

02:10 very rewarding feeling. Adame says he enjoys being able to see prior students

02:15 continue in the work and wants people to know that there are resources out

02:18 there for anyone who needs it. It's about the students, right? It's the

02:21 students that we're helping to get them um you know closer to their goal of

02:26 getting into higher education, getting into college and then organizers say

02:29 they're happy with saturday's turnout and want to create more events like

02:32 this in the future with their overall goal being to expand and include more

02:36 local vendors in Southwest Bakersfield for beer of era 23 abc news connecting

02:41 you.