TITLE IV-E STUDENT DAY 2015 |Friday, April 3, 2015
CHAMINADE RESORT & SPA, SANTA CRUZ, CA
P R OGR AM U P DA T E S
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REGISTRATION – 2 Floor
BREAKOUTS:
 Natural Bridges & Seascape are 1st Floor
 Capitola & New Brighton are 2nd Floor
LUNCH – Sunset Restaurant, 1st floor
The workshop Reducing Poverty in California replaces Youth Empowerment (Restorative Justice) and will
be offered at 11:20 am–12:20 pm and 1:40–2:40 pm. See workshop description below.
W O R KS H O PS | A D D EN D UM
Reducing Poverty in California
Poverty and Inequality: When will we “Rise Together?”
This workshop will focus on Rise Together Bay Area, which offers the “Roadmap to Cut Bay Area Poverty,” grounded
in research identifying vulnerable populations and developing “Headline Strategies” to move households toward
adequate standards of living in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Rise Together initiative utilizes a “Collective
Action/Impact” approach by focusing on developing a common agenda, shared measures, mutually-reinforcing
activities, continuous communication, and backbone support within and across counties. The cross-sector, multidisciplinary Rise Together Steering Council represents all nine Bay Area counties and works to build a social
movement to capture the hearts and shift the minds of Bay Area residents to see poverty and inequality as
unacceptable.
Presenter: Christina Arrostuto, Executive Director, Rise Together Bay Area
Christina Arrostuto began her nearly 37 years in public services as an eligibility worker in 1977 in Solano County.
During the next two decades she worked her way up through the ranks, helping residents across the county get
access to a variety of safety net services. As she did so, she also returned to school, earning both her bachelor’s
degree and Master of Public Administration.
As head of the Contra Costa Welfare Reform Planning Unit, Ms. Arrostuto helped create one of California's most
comprehensive and effective county plans for major change. She later served in the Contra Costa County
Administrator's Office as the Deputy CAO for Children and Families. She also spent some time in Nevada County,
where she led its major welfare reform efforts as the Social Services Director. Returning to Solano County, Ms.
Arrostuto became the Executive Director of First 5 Solano.
“My career has been a progression,” Ms. Arrostuto said. “I've worked directly with low-income families,
gravitated toward prevention and early intervention, and now work to address the root causes of family and
economic stress—poverty and inequality.” At First 5 Solano, she initiated major initiatives and partnerships, raised
funds, and successfully oversaw all aspects of the organization. As the executive director of Rise Together Bay Area,
she serves a cross-sector, multi-disciplinary Steering Council focused on cutting Bay Area poverty (where one in five
residents lives in poverty) in half within a decade.
Ms. Arrostuto, a founding member of the Rise Together Steering Council, lent her expertise and demonstrated
her commitment as one of the Council’s most active leaders, serving on the Executive and Development Committees.
During this time, she led a Solano County effort that recruited more partners for Rise Together than in any other
county, including leading businesses, every city, every school district, and the county Board of Supervisors. Ms.
Arrostuto co-founded and co-led Rise Together’s most visible local partnership in Solano County, the Solano Safety
Net Summits on Poverty Network.
Juvenile Justice
This workshop will primarily focus on foster youth incarceration and bring emphasis to the systemic problems within
the criminal justice system that block youth, and mostly youth of color, from achieving the knowledge,
empowerment, and dignity they need to build life skills that will work for them outside this system.
We will look at the different ways the California criminal justice systems are seeking community-based funds to build
healthier, friendlier prison systems for adults and youth. In Fresno County, for example, the Juvenile Hall or Juvenile
prison/jail has been renamed the Juvenile Justice Campus, indicating it is an educational structure, when in fact it is a
youth jail with its own built-in court system; youth don’t even have to travel to court. There will be a power point
presentation, a dialogue about systemic structures that set up and feed the school-to-prison pipeline, and a
conversation about how communities can empower foster youth through involvement of this work, conferences, and
other related campaigns against mass incarceration.
Presenters: Debbie Reyes and Joaquin Diaz
Debbie Reyes is a grassroots organizer for the California Prison Moratorium Project, which advocates for building
healthy communities using community-based solutions, rather than spending money on prison and jail expansion. Her
work over the past decade has focused on reducing the damages inflicted by California’s massive incarceration
system, which disproportionally affects minority youth and adults.
Ms. Reyes is dedicated to educating communities of color concerning the prison industrial complex and its
effects on their health, environment, and social and economic structures. A tireless advocate, she teaches capacity
building skills and motivates those who seek to be empowered. Part of her work involves exposing the flaws in the
California state budget and its failure to recognize the effects incarceration has on communities of color. With her
ability to analyze systematic structures and how they relate to individuals, Ms. Reyes brings groups, organizations,
and collectives together in social justice work through the democratic process. She educates others about how to
expose systematic structures that destroy families whose members are or have been incarcerated.
In recognition of her work at the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, Ms. Reyes was awarded a Soros
Justice Fellowship in 2006 for “Uncaging the Valley,” a project designed to prevent further construction of youth and
adult prisons in the Central Valley through uniting environmental and social justice work.
Ms. Reyes is a founding member of CURB, Californians United for a Responsible Budget. A partial list of CURB’s
achievements includes: spurring legislators to hold hearings on conditions of the Security Housing Units inside
Californians state prison system; reforming California’s Three Strikes law;
ending the shackling of women prisoners while in labor; spurring a local consortium to notify and provide reports to
the federal Health Receiver on California’s prisons to investigate the effects of Valley Fever on Central Valley prisons,
and sending signals to CDCR to shut down and transfer over 3,000 inmates.
Joaquin E. Diaz DeLeon is the real deal! He has lived and walked through local juvenile halls, boot camps, and the
notorious California Youth Authority. He spent his entire adolescence behind bars. Toward the end of his 15-to-18year-old spree in youth prison, he graduated, earned a diploma, and began a redemption journey, determined to
figure out where he went wrong. Upon release, Mr. Diaz DeLeon for the past seven years has held odd jobs and
attended several different city colleges. It has been a process for him to assimilate; his PTSD has been a challenge but
also been his strength. When he leaped out to the world and moved to San Francisco, Mr. Diaz DeLeon become
involved with the anti -prison movement and made himself its poster child. He has been on the CBS news and PBS and
has been featured in the New York Times and on KQED radio. Mr. Diaz DeLeon has also led protests and has spoken
at meetings of the state Legislature, fighting for the people who have no voice behind bars. He shares his story
and conceptualization as an expert on the prison industrial complex and its corruption, exposing this system to the
world. Mr. Diaz DeLeon continues to be involved with grass roots organizations fighting for the cause of equality for
Brown and Black brothers and sisters facing oppression.
P R OGR AM E RR A T A
The following names were inadvertently omitted:
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Student Day Workshop Planning Committee member Ana Pano of California State University, Fresno
NASW San Jose Unit Co-chair Jenna Yamaguma
A speaker for the ”LGBTQQIA/Advocacy for Transgender Youth” workshop was inadvertently misgendered. Tiana
Vargas’s correct pronouns are they, them, and their. We apologize for this error.