Deni Rodriguez: artist, writer, thinker, as well as Kid City and Urban Foundation volunteer, is also a first-year Santa Monica College student. Deni wrote this lyrical piece for the Santa Monica College Corsair. No wonder they want her to write more articles!

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Jocelyn Martinez is one of ten Kid City students at UCLA. Now in her second year, she is majoring in English and writing for La Gente. Click here for the full article, about how monolingual Spanish speaking parents participate in activities to support their children studying at UCLA.

In addition to regularly volunteering at Kid City, Jocelyn taught a summer pre-college writing and "college-knowledge" course with fellow Kid City college student Maria Alonzo (UCSD) during summer, 2014. Look for more of Jocelyn's writing at Streetsblog LA, where she was recently hired as an intern, and many more places, sure to come in the future. Great work Jocelyn!

At Kid City, just like everywhere else, it's all about who you know. In this case, one of our Kid City student's friend's big brother's cousin. Roger Francisco, a film student at Los Angeles Community College made these two beautiful videos as a course project with support from classmates, instructors, and Kid City staff person (and fellow filmmaker) Alma Catalan. Take a look and thank Roger in the comments below.

http://youtu.be/-eMBphZ7LBY

http://youtu.be/vtbxwtpoVeA

Throughout the past school year, even the previous year as a freshman in high school, my mom repetitively told me, “Kendal, you need a job!” I would always respond with a tone of disinterest, “Yeah yeah, whatever Mommy” to get her to stop talking about it. My family and I have attended Historically Black College and University presentations at Holman United Methodist Church through invitations from a friend of my parents. At the last HBCU presentation, which focused mostly on the top two schools – Spelman and Morehouse, there was a small booth towards the back of the room that caught my mothers’ attention.