Nominations

Nominated By Angelia Baker

“Angel Amankwaah is a youth in the FNE community, and attends Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Early College as an incoming sophomore. She is actively working towards a better future for herself, the different groups that she represents, and her community overall. She was born in Ghana, Africa and moved to Queens, New York. at age 5 and then later moved around from Brooklyn, Richmond, Atlanta, and finally arrived in Denver, Colorado. 

Despite attending over 11 schools, she’s been identified as gifted and talented, and plans to attend an Ivy League or HBCU after graduating in 2023 and earn her PhD, then one day own her own business. Ms. Amankwaah is a huge advocate for the black community, youth, criminal justice reform, school choice, women, and all POC. She is a co-host of the podcast Know Justice Know Peace: DMLK’s “the take” alongside 4 other young black women in DMLK’s Black Student Alliance (BSA). She started work with Steps to Success as a youth ambassador under the supervision of Ms. Angelia Baker, and then became the first youth co-chair Steps To Success has had since forming our organization. 

Angel was very instrumental in organizing our 2020 youth positive recognition campaign. She has been working hard on the release of our Power of One media campaign and has actively participated in the decision making process for future funding for our organization. Angel is continuously working on community projects, finding ways to get more youth voices involved, and has given her perspective on what the youth in Montbello want and need. She believes youth have a perspective most adults do not, which is the ability to understand both generations, and come to a middle ground. Adults frequently don’t consider the feelings of the younger generation, but youth can put all of it into perspective. Ultimately youth care about unity, not division, which is crucial to a community and moreover our society. She believes youth violence prevention isn’t a surface level issue. It’s one that comes with heavy backgrounds: toxic and abusive homes, absence of adult figures, peer pressure, trauma, unstable mental health, and much more than the eye can see. It’s more than a one man effort indeed, but she wants her work to contribute to the success of the community. 

Angel created a short PSA video for our organization, sharing how Steps To Success has impacted our Montbello community. She has also created a get out and vote video with another  of our youth ambassadors and she continues to find ways to make our community coalition meetings interactive and youthful. We appreciate the gifts and innovative skills that Angel has brought to our organization.”