Picturing Progress

Picturing Progress: Building Tomorrow’s Leaders Today

Good morning. I want to begin by expressing my gratitude to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Servant-Leadership Award Committee, ASU’s leadership, and to the wonderful team who make this celebration possible. To receive this honor in Dr. King’s name, on behalf of Boys & Girls Clubs of the Valley, is both humbling and inspiring.

I’m deeply honored to share this recognition with Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez, Laura Dicochea, and Esther Low. Each of them, servant leaders, who embody Dr. King’s vision in powerful ways.

When I think about “Picturing Progress,” I see it through the eyes of the thousands of young people we serve every day across Arizona. At Boys & Girls Clubs of the Valley, we are asking our community to support our vision “Believe, Imagine, Build”—Believe the data that shows what’s possible, Imagine the future and opportunities ahead, and let’s Build it together. This isn’t just a slogan; it’s how we ensure progress every single day.

Progress has a face, a name, and a story. It’s the teenager in Yuma who just became the first in her family to attend college. It’s the shy 8^th grade boy in Kingman who walks taller after participating in our emerging leaders program. It’s the 3^rd grade student in Phoenix who knows that her Club staff sees her potential.

Dr. King taught us that the goal of true education is Intelligence plus character. At BGCAZ, we see this truth daily. When you ask our teens about their favorite Club activity, it’s almost always volunteering. These are young people from under-resourced communities, from modest backgrounds, and their favorite thing to do is give back—whether that’s creating care kits for the homeless or helping younger Club members with homework. Why? Because service gives them agency. It gives them power to shape the world around them. It shows them that no matter their circumstances, they have something valuable to give others.

That’s servant-leadership in its purest form. That’s Dr. King’s vision in action.

Every year, more than 20,000 young people participate in our Club programs. They enter spaces where they learn that their greatness—as Dr. King said—comes from their ability to serve others. Our staff and volunteers see beyond today, they see Great Futures, filled with potential. They help our youth Believe in themselves, Imagine their futures, and Build a pathway with purpose.

Dr. King believed in the “fierce urgency of now,” and that urgency has never been greater. Through programs like our AZYouthforce initiative, where 72% of participants go on to college compared to Arizona’s 48% average, we’re not just changing statistics. We’re changing the narrative about what’s possible when you invest in young people’s character alongside their capabilities.

Dr. King said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Every member of our BGCAZ family takes that step every single day. We believe in the data that shows what works. We imagine communities where every child thrives. And we build it together—one relationship, one program, one transformed life at a time.

Picturing progress means seeing potential where others might see problems. It means understanding that when young people from challenged circumstances choose service as their favorite activity, they’re not just volunteering—they’re claiming their power as changemakers. They’re proving that you don’t need privilege to be a servant-leader; you just need purpose.

I think about one of our Club members who recently told me, “At the Club, they don’t just ask me what I want to be when I grow up. They ask me who I want to be.” That’s the difference between running programs and building servant-leaders.

This award belongs to every Club professional who stays late to listen to a young personas struggles. It belongs to every volunteer who shows up consistently to support our kids. It belongs to every donor and partner who believes that great futures start at the Club. Most of all, it belongs to our Club kids, who inspire me every day—especially when they remind us that giving back isn’t something you do when you’ve “made it.” It’s how you make it.

Thank you for this incredible honor. I urge all of us in this room to continue building and supporting servant-leaders, and ensuring that Dr. King’s dream lives on in every young person we serve. Because when we help youth achieve their highest potential, we all rise.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Esther Low, and I am deeply honored to receive the Student Servant-Leadership Award and to be here with you today.

When I first came to ASU, I was unsure of what I wanted to do with my life and felt disconnected from my new community. What I discovered instead was a place that invited me to grow, to serve, and to belong. Through friendships, mentorship, and opportunities to lead, ASU became a space where I found both direction and purpose.

The theme of today’s celebration, Picturing Progress, resonates deeply with me. Progress is often something we imagine for the future, something we hope to reach one day. But I have learned that progress is also something we create in the present through our everyday actions. It is built through servant leadership, empathy, and a willingness to uplift those around us. True progress begins when we show gratitude for each day, for the opportunities we are given, and for the people who walk alongside us.

One of my personal goals this year has been to be more present. I often find myself focused on what comes next, wishing for progress instead of recognizing it. But I have learned that it is the everyday moments, approached with intention and gratitude, that allow us to move forward. Being present is one of the most meaningful forms of servant leadership. It means listening when someone needs to be heard, showing up consistently, and choosing to care deeply in the moment we are given.

I began my journey at ASU feeling uncertain, but through the opportunity to serve as a student leader, I found connection and purpose. Serving others has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my time here, and it has taught me the importance of living fully in the present while giving back to the community that has given so much to me.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged us to imagine a more just and equitable world and to take responsibility for turning that vision into reality through how we lead and serve. His legacy reminds us that leadership is not defined by position or recognition, but by our responsibility to one another.

I would like to sincerely thank everyone who has supported me for your love, encouragement, and belief in me. Thank you as well to the MLK committee and everyone here today for this honor and for reminding us that leadership rooted in service not only addresses the needs of our community but also transforms those who serve alongside it.

I am inspired by each of you who make this community a place where students like me can continue picturing progress, not only in the future, but in each day we are given.

Thank you.

Picturing Progress and Cultivating Futures

Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez

Two nights ago, I dreamt that I was here right now, getting called up to give this speech, only I didn’t have anything prepared except for a note on a piece of paper that said to make sure I talk about the garden. So I’m going to do that.

In a conversation with a friend this week, I was relating a story about growing up in rural northwestern New Mexico. In that part of the state there is a famously difficult mud called caliche mud – it’s not great for growing things, but we didn’t know that as kids. What was once fertile soil – the carrot capital of the world in the 1940s and 50s, had been met with the injustices of the uranium mining industry in the 1950s – poisoning the water and rivers for so many communities who worked the land. 

My grandfather and my dad loved gardening, and I cannot tell you the number of times we, as kids, enthusiastically thumbed through seed catalogs in our boldest attempts to grow blueberries, pecan trees, melons, and all other sorts of fruits and vegetables in that mud. Our best efforts of dragging hoses around to water each fruit tree twice, ordering more blueberry plants when the last ones died, and coming back each season to try new things, didn’t always work. And that’s ok. Because even if nothing grew, we never stopped trying to cultivate something.

Chicano writer Rudolfo Anaya refers to the phrase “a pura pala” as a nuevomexicano chant, a mantra, a song sung on the way to work. He writes that, “working la madre tierra (mother earth) is a spiritual endeavor, it is also hard work. To create a village is hard work but, in the end, the water flows down the rows and creates the magic of green.”

Each summer during my doctoral program, I returned to New Mexico to plant a garden, this time in Albuquerque – remembering the lessons from my childhood about persistence and maintaining hope in gr. This time, I wasn’t in the arid high desert of my childhood, I was across the street from the Río Grande, surrounded by acequias and temperate weather where most everything grew. But the mud was the same, and the work was still hard. I would wake up at 5:00 a.m. to beat the summer sun and come back out at night to check on the progress of the plants, the fruit trees and to grab my pala to ensure that the water flowed in the best way possible. My son would join me, and he, too, has carried on a love for cultivating and caring for things dear to him.

Both my childhood and early adult experiences of gardening are rooted in knowledge that my parents and grandparents’ generation passed down to me, and that I passed on to my son. I am thankful to them for teaching me not only the art of caring for the land, but how to work toward something that is simultaneously really hard and gratifying. Progress looked different each time – the conditions were different, but it didn’t change the fact that planting was a practice we had committed to, and that the fruits of our labor – quite literally, was something we could share with others, and that community could be invited in each time.

At my mom’s house in Albuquerque, there are many fruit trees. My siblings and I, perhaps some more than others, share an obsession with the care of these trees. The harvest starts with the cherries in May, then the peaches in July, followed by the pears, and lastly the apples in the late fall. Everyone is invited to the harvest, with the stipulation that they, too, care for the trees. What once started as seeds, has progressed into community gatherings where passersby grab their bags of fruit, engage in conversation, and delight in the joy of the sustenance that the food and community provide. None of this happened without hard work and the belief that something might grow.

As a Chicana studies scholar, I recognize that our struggles to cultivate just futures are collective. During the Civil Rights Movement, Chicano leaders such as César Chávez and Dolores Huerta led national and international movements to boycott grapes because the farmworkers were treated unjustly. In planning the Poor People’s Campaign, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., too, highlighted the inequitable policies of land ownership and the food insecurity faced by Black communities in the U.S. South. Black and Mexican American communities rallied to protest these conditions because they believed that a different reality was possible. Their hard work, their struggles, and their triumphs, is part of the progress we’ve achieved, and we carry their mantra today.

For me, picturing progress means that we plant those seeds, no matter where we are, and no matter what conditions might be stacked against us. We do the work, because we know that the harvest will come. And we do this in community, rising to the occasion and always growing and learning together.

Good morning!

¡Buenos días!

I want to begin by thanking the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee for this recognition. I’m deeply grateful to receive the Staff Servant-Leadership Award.

También estoy profundamente agradecida a quienes están aquí compartiendo este momento conmigo hoy, mi madre, mi hijo Aleck, mis amigos y colegas. Los quiero mucho y gracias por todo el apoyo que me han brindado.

As I reflect on my own journey, from the borderlands to higher education, and now standing here as a recipient of this award, I’m reminded that progress became possible when I was seen, supported, and welcomed in higher education.

Gracias, Profesora Irasema Coronado, for seeing me, believing in me, and for affirming that I belonged in these spaces. I stand here as a reminder that it takes only one of you to change the course of a student’s life.

And while individualized support matters deeply, collective support matters just as much.

What this last year has taught me, more than ever, is that progress happens when we come together to support our students through times of change and uncertainty.

For the students I serve—and for the student I once was—progress is not always linear, and as policies and priorities in our country continue to change and impact immigrant students in higher education, progress may no longer depend on programs or initiatives, but on all of us.

With this in mind, let’s continue to provide individualized and collective support to our students; let’s use our voices to advocate for them; let’s walk alongside students as we imagine solutions, allowing their voices to guide the way, all while continuing to educate ourselves.

As long as we continue this work together, our students will know that they are seen, that they belong, and that they are not alone.

Progress happens when we choose to do this work together.

And thank those who have supported me along the way. I couldn’t do it without you.

Thank you!

Gracias!