Community Voice: Wednesday Pope - United Ways of California

Community Voice: Wednesday Pope

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Read time: 6 minutes

El Dorado County, California

Wednesday Pope is a youth advocate and is currently serving as chair of the Youth Empowerment Commission, appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom. She uses her lived experiences and her ability to connect deeply with others to be a voice for current and future young Californians.

I’m really happy and stable right now, but I wasn’t for a long time. Before becoming an active youth advocate, I experienced homelessness, housing insecurity, food insecurity, and poverty, and I was in the foster care system. I’m so blessed to have come out of that experience as a much more compassionate, empathetic, and understanding person. Now, I’m fighting for a world where future youth don’t have to go through the trauma that I had to experience. I want to prevent this cycle of traumatization, this cycle of poverty.

When I was 13, my father and I didn’t have stable housing. It was summer, so my dad couldn’t work because he had to watch me all day. Then when school started again, I usually didn’t go because we couldn’t afford to get me to school, and the bus wouldn’t know where to pick me up. When we were able to stay at a local motel or somewhere like that, sometimes the school would have the bus come pick me up there, but it wasn’t always possible. That instability was really scary. And then I ended up in systems of care, like group homes and foster homes.

After time in the foster care system, I was again homeless, living in my car at age 17. I was enrolled at Folsom Lake College, and the Extended Opportunity Programs and Services staff there were so incredibly supportive. They helped me find places to shower. The moment they heard about a resource, they told me about it. They created a food closet because a few students like me needed food. 

My social worker and Court Appointed Special Advocate were also really helpful in providing resources, and I learned about a lot of resources from other foster youth.

Throughout it all, I gained access to most supports because I asked. I didn’t always know what to ask for, but asking questions helped me find resources.

I’m grateful I asked those questions. Foster youth need to have self-agency and self-advocacy to find resources, and they shouldn’t be shy in asking for help. At the same time, organizations and programs need to be finding foster youth and proactively giving them the information. We can meet each other half-way. 

Prevention and Supports as a Solution

Based on my experiences and what I’ve learned since, I am a big believer in governments spending resources on prevention to help save money and reduce trauma later on.

When my father and I were experiencing homelessness, if there had been a program that gave my father just a little bit of money to get a down payment for an apartment, I wouldn’t have ended up back in systems of care that likely ended up costing the state tens of thousands of dollars. Housing support programs, including rental down payment assistance, have since been developed, but we have to fight for their continuation, and there is still a need for more.

There are ways for us to create systems that ultimately will help keep families together, prevent traumatization, prevent re-traumatization for youth who have previously been in the system, and prevent mental health challenges that are often contributing to things like homelessness and further family separation.

All of this goes hand-in-hand when we’re talking about populations like youth impacted by foster care, disabilities, homelessness, and the juvenile justice system. We need to focus more on the mental health side of it and make sure they’re getting all of those support services and being connected to housing services and services to help them meet basic needs.

I feel like once we have our basic needs met, everything else is a lot easier to work on and process. Relatively, it isn’t that expensive to provide more support services, especially when we’re talking about families within the foster system and the juvenile justice system.

Tax Credits Create Stability

I also think the Foster Youth Tax Credit is one of the most important things we can do to support foster youth. At one time, the money I received from this credit made the difference in allowing me to keep my apartment. Another time, it provided a blessing of a cushion to cover my expenses for a few weeks while waiting for my new job to start—a job I loved and that gave me so many opportunities. And when the credit gave me a few hundred extra dollars to hold on to just in case of an emergency, it actually helped me build a bigger savings over time and made me so much more comfortable with my budget.

Foster youth don’t have a contingency plan. We don’t have a safety net, like family, to fall back on. When you have just exited extended foster care and you lose your job, how are you going to pay your rent? Where are you going to live? When you don’t have that safety net, you act in desperation a lot, like taking the first job available rather than taking a few more weeks to find one that will give you more future options. Preventing that desperation can actually help end the cycles of re-traumatization and poverty. The Foster Youth Tax Credit gave me a safety net, making me feel more financially comfortable, and I know a lot of other foster youth who have echoed that. To youth who have been struggling since the day they turned 18, the tax credit is massive. It helps create stability. 

Channeling Lived Experience into Advocacy and Education

As a youth advocate, I now work to advocate for policies and to help educate about and implement programs and services. We can advocate for and work on the policies all day, but we have to make sure the practical application happens, too. Governments have to implement programs, and eligible people have to access them.

Much of my work involves listening and sharing real stories, ensuring that policymakers hear about the actual experiences of California’s youth. It should make people uncomfortable to have these conversations, to hear stories of lived experience. We’re trying to change things, so having those uncomfortable conversations is important. I also like to find the successes and learn from what is working so we can build on that. 

Last summer, I was appointed by Governor Newsom to serve as a Commissioner on the California Youth Empowerment Commission. This group is trying to hear the voices of and represent Californians under the age of 25, especially those who are victims of a system that was not designed to help them, like youth who have experienced homelessness, have disabilities, have been in the foster care system, are LGBTQI+, or have been impacted by the juvenile justice system. Our role is to support and represent youth in every way possible, and to hear them and help them feel heard and validated. I offer my unique perspective from my own lived experiences, and I listen to others’ stories and incorporate them to make sure we’re representing everyone we should be. 

I also work with foster youth who are currently in care. I really hope that I’m able to watch these youth grow into well-adapted, strong, resilient, resourceful, compassionate people, even after everything they’ve been through. 

Talking about my story and sharing the stories of others, channeling that trauma into something that is really meaningful to me—working on legislative bills, fighting for causes—brings me joy. It’s really valuable to me that I have a job where I get to live my truth. I am proud to be working to end cycles of poverty among families like my own and to create a better society for future under-served youth. 


United Ways of California’s partners across the state provide free tax preparation for eligible Californians. Our IRS-trained, highly knowledgeable volunteers—available in person or online—are well-versed in looking for critical tax credits, like those available for Californians with low incomes, Californians in foster care or who have recently exited the foster care system, and parents with young children. We also have a free online self-filing option for Californians at all income levels. Visit MyFreeTaxes.org today to learn more about eligibility, filing options, and tax credits.

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