On June 12, 2011, this inspirational keynote message was delivered by Lydia A. Hollie, JD/MAED, former Co-Chair, Long Beach DHHS Weed and Seed Program Steering Committee, at the Long Beach Polytechnic High School Class of 2011 Senior Baccalaureate Ceremony in Long Beach, CA.

1. CLASS OF 2011
SENIOR BACCALAUREATE CEREMONY
LONG BEACH POLYTECHNIC HIGH SCHOOL
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA
INSPIRATIONAL KEYNOTE SPEECH:
"GIVING BACK TO YOUR COMMUNITY IS YOUR HIGHEST CALLING"
BY: LYDIA A. HOLLIE, JD, MAED
CO-CHAIR, LB DHHS WEED AND SEED STEERING COMMITTEE
JUNE 12, 2011

2. 2011 SENIOR BACCALAUREATE CEREMONY - LONG BEACH POLYTECHNIC HIGH SCHOOL
INSPIRATIONAL KEYNOTE SPEECH
BY: LYDIA A. HOLLIE, JD, MAED
CO-CHAIR, LB DHHS WEED AND SEED STEERING COMMITTEE
Good Afternoon Everyone,
Foremost, I thank God for my life and the opportunity to serve my
community.
Graduates, through determination and hard work you have earned the right
to be a member of this Class of 2011. Congratulations on a well-deserved
accomplishment! This commencement will be one of many successes that you
will achieve in your lifetime. Enjoy and cherish this moment.
Let Your Light Shine with Power, Purpose, and Boldness
This is an exciting time for you. You are full of anticipation and somewhat
apprehensive about what the future may hold. In her 1992 book, A Return to
Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles, Marianne
Williamson made an insightful observation: “Our deepest fear is not that we are
inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our
light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to
be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You
are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is
nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure
around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make
manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in
everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other
people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our
presence automatically liberates others.” That statement is profound for this
reason: once you have come to terms with the power that is within, you
automatically raise the bar of expectation, you achieve the impossible, and
simultaneously demonstrate to others that everything is possible with the
determination to overcome any obstacle and accomplish your purpose.

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Booker T. Washington once said, “Success is to be measured not so much by
the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has
overcome.” Mr. Washington did not allow that peculiar institution called
slavery to subdue, limit, nor deny him of his rightful place as a contributing
citizen of this country. Most notably, he established the Tuskegee University in
Alabama, which he led during his presidency in 1881 to become one of the
leading institutions of higher learning in the United States. Graduates, I urge
you to take special note of this fact: Anything that is worth achieving will not
come easy nor without a price. The obstacles and roadblocks that you faced to
reach today’s milestone is a preview of what you can expect to contend with in
your quest to live your lives to the fullest and serve your community with honor
and respect.
Serving Your Community means Giving Back to Your Community
You will soon learn that living an abundant life includes giving back to your
community. The Former Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill,
succinctly emphasized that point, "You make a living by what you get, you
make a life by what you give." In the spirit of community service, an
anonymous philosopher reminds us to, “never underestimate the power of your
actions…with one small gesture you can change a person’s life. God puts us all
of in each others' lives to impact one another in some way.” Graduates, from
this day forward, let your life be a living embodiment of this declaration: The
destiny of society is found within the power of your decisions.
Life’s Equation is the Formula for Giving Back to Your Community
The milestone you have reached today has been both exciting and life-
affirming. You must now prepare yourselves with the ability and confidence to
think with greater depth and breadth about how to effectively reconfigure our
communities in a lasting and meaningful way. And you can only prepare
yourselves through study and scholarship, leadership, and community service.

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Peace Ambassador Claudette Powers summarizes life into this simple equation,
“Events plus Responses equals Outcomes.” With this equation in mind, I
would like to share with you how I have been giving back to my community.
The Events in My Community. I have fond memories of growing up in
Central Long Beach, but since my childhood, the neighborhoods worsened
dramatically. This area lies north to Hill Street, south to Anaheim Street, east to
Cherry Avenue, and west to the L.A. River. With a population of approximately
46,000 residents, one-third lives below the federal poverty level with an annual
median household income of $21,000 for a family of four, and over one-half of
this community survives on $15,000 a year or less. Over one-half have not
completed high school and less than ten percent are high school graduates.
As you know, Long Beach Polytechnic High School is an oasis in the middle of
this section of Central Long Beach. Despite the best efforts of concerned
community members and civic officials, for nearly 30 years, this area suffered
from the notoriety of having the highest violent crime rates in the city of Long
Beach. Over those years, I have attended far more funerals than weddings,
watched others enter the jail and prison system, and observed the devastation
on the families (including my own) and neighborhoods where crime scenes
were a regular occurrence. These conditions have always troubled me and
compelled me to initiate proactive measures to permanently end this negative
cycle.
The great Cesar Chavez spoke of the interdependent relationship between
the community member and the community’s destiny, "we cannot seek
achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our
community...Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations
and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own." Implicit in that
observation is a depth of selflessness that must be present if civic engagement
is essential to your purpose. Professor Thomas Ehrlich, a senior scholar at the

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Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, defines civic
engagement as "working to make a difference in the civic life of our
communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values, and
motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a
community, through both political and non-political processes." He goes on to
say that, "A morally and civically responsible individual recognizes himself or
herself as a member of a larger social fabric and therefore consider social
problems to be at
least partly his or her own; such an individual is willing to see the moral and
civic dimensions of issues, to make and justify informed moral and civic
judgments, and to take action when appropriate."
How Did I Respond to the Events? I renewed my mind and changed my
thinking about my role as a member of this community and my purpose in life.
According to Physicist and Nobel Laureate Albert Einstein, "You can't solve a
problem from the same consciousness that created it." My response to those
overwhelming community conditions was driven by the realization that I have a
moral and ethical responsibility to make a difference in the quality of life in my
hometown.
Since 1996, I have given back to this community by volunteering my mind,
talent, and time, while simultaneously working as an elementary educator and
fulfilling higher educational goals. And in 2002, I became a relentless advocate
for effective and humane approaches to address youth and gang violence
prevention and intervention, specifically in the area of building community
capacity and empowering its members to work collaboratively to change
systems and policies to reduce violence, save lives, and restore
neighborhoods. When I served as Chairperson of the city's Human Relations
Commission, a comprehensive report on the problem of youth and gang
violence was written, approved by community and civic leadership, including
an endorsement by the Long Beach Police Department, and unanimously

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approved by the Long Beach City Council in 2003. That effort led to the
formation of the Long Beach Youth and Gang Violence Prevention Task Force
in 2004, which focused on Central Long Beach. While chairing the Task Force,
two grants were successfully spearheaded, the U.S. Department of Justice
Weed & Seed grant ($1 million) and the Long Beach Gang Reduction
Intervention Program ($400,000) from the Governor‘s Office. The Weed and
Seed Steering Committee, along with city support staff and the Long Beach
Police Department, engaged in programmatic strategic planning that
established effective violence prevention approaches to violent crime, gang
activity, youth development, and community restoration in the Central Long
Beach area.
What Outcomes have the Community Experienced? Since its inception in
2007, the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services Weed and
Seed Program community residents and partnering agencies have benefited
the Central Area, including: (1) a 24% drop in violent crime since 2007, which
substantially contributed to the city's overall reduction in violent crime to its
lowest levels in nearly 40 years; (2) a reduction in gang activity and truancy
citations, (3) the development of a citywide Comprehensive Reentry and
Employment Services Strategic Plan and demonstration project designed to aid
juvenile and adult re-entrants from California's camps, jails, and prisons in
making a seamless transition back to the community, while minimizing the
likelihood of re-incarceration, (4) sponsoring parent empowerment workshops
in English, Khmer, and Spanish, from which graduates become community
parent mentors, (5) established a Youth Leadership Program and curriculum,
currently developing 25 teenagers into tomorrow's leaders in the areas of
social, environmental, and economic justice, and (6) incubated the PEACE
GARDEN at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park , a recent recipient of second place
honors at the 2011 Neighborhood of the Year awards in the Multi-Neighborhood
division. Within one year and under the watchful eye of community elders, this

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community garden was designed and built by Central Area youth while
simultaneously strengthening intergenerational relationships. There are
several Weed and Seed Program youth leaders who are graduating from Long
Beach Polytechnic and other area schools, including: (Jazmine Franklin,
Kasmere Duffey, Ashley Kearn, S. Robert Rath, Jarath Sok, Jericho Williams;
and Genesis Higareda, Sophall Serth, Rin Chhnoun, Erica Vargas, and Eric
Vargas). The Weed and Seed Program and PEACE GARDEN have received
local and national recognition because these young people changed their
consciousness, immersed themselves in the community, and as a result,
directly contributed to reducing violence, saving lives, and restoring Central
Area neighborhoods.
The Class of 2011 will Elevate Long Beach to a National Model City
Nearly ten years have lapsed since I started this journey, and I am grateful
to see the fruits that giving back to the community have made possible. I have
great confidence that your advocacy will raise the bar of expectation and take
our city to an even higher level of community engagement and civic action for
the purposes of reducing violence to zero, completing the restoration of our
neighborhoods, and establishing Long Beach as a model city throughout the
nation. If this vision is to be realized, then giving back to your community
means to be fully persuaded that public service is a ministry of the highest
calling as well as the epitome of visionary leadership, boldness to speak truth
to power, compassion for the least among you, and humility in knowing that
love will always conquers hate. In the world that you will inherit, exemplify
these characteristics in your conversation and lifestyle, and you will become
choreographers and facilitators that seek to orchestrate a symphonic,
harmonious, and holistic approach to developing the human infrastructure in
an ever-changing world. As 21st century leaders, your job is to inform,
educate, encourage, and empower communities so that they transform into
growing, thriving, prospering, and safe environments where people will be

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drawn to come and live, work, visit, and worship.
In closing, more than one-third of the Long Beach population is 24 years
and under, which means that you are its most significant constituency. You are
valuable, important and necessary to this city's path to greatness. Use your
strong moral and ethical fiber, boldness, courage, and leadership to make this
city a better place to live in harmony and peace. You are a beacon of light that
will shine through the challenges before for you and brighten the lives of others
around you. Your city needs you, and its future is in your hands.
Again, congratulations Class of 2011. May God abundantly bless each of
you in your present and future endeavors.
Thank you.

9. LYDIA A. HOLLIE, JD, MAED
Lydia A. Hollie is a champion for reducing youth violence and transforming troubled
neighborhoods into model communities. Her efforts are inspired by the awareness that
the well-being of families determines whether children fail or succeed and whether a
community declines or prospers. A Long Beach native, Hollie volunteered eight years
on the Long Beach Human Relations Commission, including a two-year distinguished
term (2001-2003) as Chairperson. Dr. Hollie then served as Chairperson of the Long
Beach Youth and Gang Violence Prevention Task Force (2004-2009) and spearheaded
the successful acquisition of both the U.S. Department of Justice Weed & Seed grant
($1 million) and the Long Beach CalGRIP grant ($400,000) to reduce violent crime,
address gang violence prevention, youth development, and community restoration in
the Central Long Beach area. During her four-year tenure as Co-Chair of the Long
Beach Department of Health & Human Services Weed and Seed Steering Committee,
the target community achieved a 24% decrease in violent crime, which helped to
reduce the city's overall violent crime rate to its lowest levels in nearly 40 years.
Reducing violence, saving lives, restoring neighborhoods, and revitalizing
communities are are chief objectives of her mission.
An advocate for intellectual and professional development, Hollie is a 2010 Passing
The Mantle Fellow from the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture. She holds an
AA in International Business, BA in Political Science (with dual Minors in African
Studies, and Social & Political Economy), MA in Education, and a Juris Doctor. A
recipient of numerous awards and recognitions for her extensive involvement and
volunteer service to the community, Hollie is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist
at various venues, and guest lecturer at higher education forums. Recently, Dr. Lydia
Hollie was elected by the Lynwood Teachers Association as the representative on the
California Teachers Association State Council for a two-year term to address statewide
educational policy.
Dr. Hollie is a passionate believer in the resilient, transformative, and evolutionary
nature of the human spirit to yield progressive change to one’s circumstances and
ascend beyond the insurmountable.