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The COVID pandemic has certainly shaken up our community, causing small businesses to shut down and many restaurants to permanently close their doors to the public. This has caused many…

Bruce Lee once said,

“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work, and into your life. There are no limits.”

Ryan Liu is a dedicated volunteer who embraces this concept in his goals and community service. Ryan is a determined sophomore student at Cedar Park High School in Austin, Texas as well as a member of the Austin Chinese-American Network. Over the past year, Ryan not only served his community in his local city, but he also reached beyond and worked across the world to serve communities beyond his limits.

Jessica Hao is a Junior at Westwood Highschool. She is is a Girl Scout and an Austin Youth Council (AYC) member and the committee chair of the School-to-Prison Pipeline committee within AYC. She is a winner of the Gold PVSA award, one of the 34 youth who were recently awarded this annual award administered by ACAN. 

You might have heard about the Toastmaster International Club. It is a global organization with over 360,000 members for the purpose of promoting communication, public speaking, and leadership. Do you know that ACAN has a similar program, for youth and run by youth?

ACAN Youth Public Speaking Club, sometimes called “social masters”, was founded in August last year and we have been meeting every Tuesday since then, minus holidays. But have they made any difference? What would the club members say about their experience? 

Just as hope, ACAN youths did not stop on the first couple days of 2021; instead, they packed Bags of Hope with heart-warming essentials. Altogether, over 30 youth and parents spent 110 hours to prepare and deliver over 400 bags to the homeless camps all over the city. 

2020 is a year of many things. But what have we learned? Especially, what have our next generation, young men and women learned during the time of quarantine and online school? I asked them the question and below are their answers, sorted by their first name.