Nothing About Me, Without Me
This reflection is shared with permission and represents one youth’s lived experience. Virtue Visionary exists to protect spaces where youth can speak honestly, be seen fully, and engage in advocacy without fear of being minimized or tokenized.
“My name is Laquita Jaouani, but if you want to know about advocacy, Laquita Howell is your girl. I didn't start out wanting to be an advocate. It just fell in my lap. I was 15 years old when I met Lisa Dickson and learned that my desire to want more really was just the seed to becoming an advocate.
From my experience as a foster teen girl, there was always trouble, and sometimes it wasn’t what people thought. But the feeling that no one was listening to me made the saxophone grow louder. And I knew I had to get people to hear me—change was needed. Under Lisa’s mentoring and trainings, I learned to tell my story in a way people would listen, even if it sounded far-fetched.
I quickly realized that the most important thing about advocacy is that change does not always happen while you are marching in the front lines. Sometimes, and most of the time, it will happen later. So I wasn't changing the system for me—I was changing the system for my future and younger foster brothers and sisters.
Between 15–18 years old, I advocated with local agencies, national agencies, and at the Statehouse on topics such as foster youth driving, the needs of aging-out youth, young fathers and mothers, and a lot of my work centered around authentic youth engagement—or nowadays called client-centered—where we expressed the importance of having actual served clients or youth at the table when developing programs and services. Nowadays they say, “Nothing about me without me.” We wanted them to listen and take us seriously and not treat us like a token or a checkbox.
It was a blessing to be a part of the start of the movement. There were very few movements I was not involved with in some way. I was president of the Hamilton County Youth Advisory Board and served on boards for Hamilton County Mental Health and Addiction, Lighthouse Youth & Family Services Board, and their youth advisory board, along with memberships with National Foster Youth Initiative and Action Ohio.
There, I shared my voice and my story to help push legislation, change policies and procedures, and develop programs and movements such as extending foster care to age 21, Bridges, ending homelessness, Journey to Successful Living, authentic youth engagement, the importance of youth and driving, higher education mentoring initiatives, scholarship fundraising, and more nationally and locally.
If you take anything away from this, know that advocacy is important—local or national—and that results are not always immediate, but keep pushing”.
