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In this episode, Athena sits down with Daysi Silvas Ramirez and Zach Perez, two peer support associates with San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools (SBCSS) who use their lived experience in foster care and homelessness to inspire and guide youth across the county. At only 21 and 24 years old, they already serve as powerful advocates, mentors, and truth-tellers. Bringing authenticity, vulnerability, and empathy to every space they enter.

Daysi and Zach open up about their early years: surviving homes marked by addiction, domestic violence, instability, and emotional neglect. They describe being separated from siblings, bouncing through multiple foster placements, and enduring both supportive and harmful foster homes. Their stories reveal the often-overlooked emotional reality of foster care: isolation, distrust, a desire for connection, and the small acts of kindness that become lifelines.

Together, they reflect on what makes a good foster parent, why intention and empathy matter, and how their work today allows them to offer youth what they wished someone had offered them. They share the moments when they recognized themselves in the students they support, the conversations that shifted a young person’s outlook, and the resilience required to break cycles and rewrite their futures.

This episode is a heartfelt reminder that trauma shapes, but does not define a child. Daysi and Zach embody hope, and their message to adults and youth alike is simple: Your circumstances do not decide your destination. With compassion, consistency, and belief, lives can change.

Highlights

• Lived experience leadership: Daysi and Zach explain how their foster care journeys now shape their roles speaking to students and educators.
• Raw childhood realities: Violence, addiction, instability, unsafe homes, and multiple removals from biological parents.
• The good and the harmful: Examples of both supportive foster parents and emotionally damaging placements.
• The weight of trauma: How kids laugh and play at school but often carry emotional burdens no one sees.
• Isolation in a crowded room: Why foster youth can feel alone despite being surrounded by adults.
• What kids remember: Simple acts. Being fed, being included, being treated like family—often become the most powerful moments.
• Advice for prospective foster parents: A child with trauma requires patience, intention, emotional skill, and the willingness to stay.
• Moments of impact: Zach reconnecting a youth with her foster sister; Daysi seeing students open up after hearing her story.
• Their futures: Daysi’s plans for a master’s degree and mentorship; Zach’s ambition to become a business owner and build a large, loving family.
• Parting messages: Give youth grace. Offer hope. Be intentional. And never let your past decide your future.

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