00:00I'm Haley Colburn and I am Miss Teen USA.
00:07Standing there with Kirby, my first runner-up,
00:10there's actually this myth that the girls whose hands are on top wins.
00:14So we did this. We put one on top, one on bottom for each other.
00:17And I knew either one of us would be an incredible Miss Teen USA.
00:21But when I heard Kansas, I just stopped thinking
00:24and started crying and screaming and jumping around.
00:28So I was just so happy, so genuinely happy.
00:35I was sharing my story and expanding Self Posse
00:39and teaching girls to embrace every inch of who they are
00:42because the things that make them unique are things that should be celebrated
00:45and things that they should be proud of.
00:50It's hard, especially as a young girl, to not see people that look like you.
00:54And you start to question whether those things are maybe false.
00:58At a peak moment in my youth as I was growing up,
01:03I went to a summer intensive with the Dance Theatre of Harlem,
01:06which is an African-American ballet company.
01:08So for the first time in the context of ballet,
01:11I was learning to really celebrate that side of myself
01:14and to embrace it as a classical ballerina as well.
01:17So coming home, I just had this happiness and this newfound confidence
01:21that I wanted to spread with girls in my area.
01:24I think being confident affects every aspect of your life.
01:28It affects how you feel about yourself, your relationships with the people around you.
01:32And being able to go and talk to girls in middle school
01:36and have them ask me for advice or share anecdotes
01:39has just made it such an issue that is really close to my heart
01:43that I'm excited to advocate for nationally as Miss Teen USA now.
01:50So I started Self Posse. It's short for Self Positive.
01:53And it's an organization where I travel to middle schools with other girls
01:57that are closer to them in age.
02:00And we share personal stories with them.
02:02We share advice, struggles that we had,
02:04and we tell them how they're feeling as normal
02:06and how to really just embrace who they are
02:09and to celebrate the things that make them unique
02:12or the things that they might consider oddities.
02:13And we also host seminars annually that are free
02:17so that girls from absolutely any background can come and attend
02:20and hear the incredible and so needed message.
02:27Well, gun control was something really heavily on my mind
02:31because there was a school shooting in Texas the morning of finals.
02:34That was so disheartening and so shocking.
02:37And even in Kansas, which is a Cary state,
02:40there was an incident one morning where a bullet came through my front door
02:45and that could have easily hurt one of my family members
02:48or ended very terribly.
02:52So I recognize with that personal situation I've gone through
02:55and just being a student, being in school and having to go through protocol
02:59of what would happen in the case of a school shooting
03:01brings awareness to the fact that we do need reformation.
03:05we do need to pay attention to this issue
03:08and make sure that kids won't have to go through this
03:10in 5, 10, 20 years, even tomorrow.
03:16I think I would address political corruption
03:19because that's the basis of our government
03:20and citizens have a right to know what's going on in their country
03:23so that's why I'm proud of my generation
03:25for really stepping up, being active and being informed.
03:28Thank you Refinery29!
