Young advocates push for mental health and racial equity

Local teens Madeleine Gillespie and Vera Woo will spend the next year on the Marin County Youth Commission, which is focusing its work on five topics: mental health, racial equity, disability justice, immigrant justice and alcohol and drug prevention. (Amelia Plumb / For The Ark)

Local teens Madeleine Gillespie and Vera Woo were each looking for a way to get more involved in community issues as they moved through high school.

Madeleine says she’s long been interested in women’s rights and educational rights. She’s participated in some local protests, which she says sparked a desire to continue to speak out against injustice.

“I just wanted to do as much as I could to help the people who, often, their voices are stifled and they don’t have the opportunity to stand up for themselves at times because of the way our society works,” says the Belvedere resident, a junior at Tamalpais High School.

Vera, meanwhile, says growing up Asian American in predominantly white Marin County could be isolating at times and shaped her interest in racial justice, adding that as a person of color, she’s often felt “out of place” among her peers.

“I really just want to get involved and make other people who may be experiencing that to not have to go through the same experience I went through,” says Vera, who attended Reed Union School District schools and is now a sophomore at The Branson School.

Both girls’ desires to create change led them to join the Marin County Youth Commission. They were each appointed to the board in August and will spend the next year working alongside nearly two dozen other teens to learn more about and help tackle some of the county’s most pressing issues, from mental health and racial equity to disability justice, immigrant justice and alcohol and drug prevention.

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