'Uplifting voices'

Alumna gives platform to the young and underserved

By California State University, Bakersfield

March 17^th, 2020

Editor’s note: Reyna Olaguez is one of two CSUB alumni receiving Wendy Wayne Ethics Award honorable mentions. The other is Olly López Beltrán, a recent graduate and now master’s in public administration student.

Check out the full list of honorees on the website of CSUB's Kegley Institute of Ethics, the awards founder and organizer.

Reyna Olaguez heard through the grapevine that elementary schools in Arvin had installed water stations that filter out arsenic, but not Arvin High.

So one of her youth reporters at South Kern Sol started asking high school administrators what the hang-up was since the nonprofit Rural Community Assistance Corp. said it wanted to partner with them on a filter project.

Not long after, the high school and the nonprofit did partner up.

“Reyna, what have you done?” she recalled a contact at Rural Community Assistance asking her. “Now they want to work with us!”

No story better illustrates the mission of South Kern Sol and Olaguez, its executive director and a double CSUB alumna. South Kern Sol is a youth-led, mostly foundation-funded media outlet that covers underserved communities in and around Bakersfield, especially wellness disparities in them.

South Kern Sol’s news stories and commentaries are published online and in local small newspapers. Its home page currently features pieces about a failed bid to open two immigration detention centers in McFarland; efforts to promote the 2020 census in areas at risk of being undercounted; and a Bakersfield College philosophy professor who cancelled classes to give students time to vote.

The authors of those three stories reflect the makeup of South Kern Sol’s staff. The first is a youth reporter from Delano, the second a former Bakersfield Californian staff writer and current contributor, and the third an incoming freshman at BC.

“The goal is to uplift the voices of young people,” Olaguez said, “and to shine a light on issues that are not being lifted up in the mainstream media because of shrinking newsrooms.”

Finding her footing

Olaguez, who alongside two full-time staffers and a cadre of volunteers recruits, trains and edits the youth reporters, took a winding road to journalism.

She’s the fifth of 10 children raised in Westley, Calif., and then Shafter and Bakersfield. Her father worked in a fertilizer plant before operating his own small trucking outfit; her mother did field work.

Olaguez (in the yellow dress) is the fifth of 10 children raised first in Westley, Calif., and then Shafter and Bakersfield. Here she is with her parents and siblings.

All through high school and college, Olaguez worked for her dad arranging transports of agricultural products and helped take care of her younger brothers and sisters. Olaguez’s dad had just a sixth-grade education, so she relied on mentors at South High School to help her apply to CSUB.

“These mentors were amazing,” Olaguez said.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in political science in 2007. A series of mostly short-term jobs followed. Olaguez did community outreach for Radio Campesina, interned at Telemundo, worked as a legislative aide to a state senator and was a crime prevention specialist for the Kern County Sheriff’s Office.

Olaguez’s professional life finally found footing in 2009 when the U.S. Census Bureau hired her to promote the every-decade population count in Kern County by developing relationships with tribal governments, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, businesses and the media.

Olaguez estimates developing more than 800 partnerships. It gave her a chance to learn about the media, work with young people and connect with many different constituent groups. And she was able to save money for the first time.

“The census changed my life,” she said.

Fulfilling work

Olaguez went on to have two children (she and her husband have an 8-year-old and 6-year-old), earn a master’s degree in public administration and work in private business before joining South Kern Sol as a media coordinator in 2013. She’d go out to schools to recruit reporters and then train them.

South Kern Sol's mission is "building healthy communities, one story at a time." That includes covering stories like this one, the experience of Dreamers in Arvin.

Community members increasingly lobbied Olaguez to cover stories that weren’t getting attention, but she didn’t have the capacity to do them. Over time she was able to get funding for one part-time beat reporter and then what she has now: two full-time ones. Both have worked for The Californian.

“It’s fulfilling to work with local youth,” said Elizabeth Sanchez, a former TBC staffer who now reports stories and works with young reporters at South Kern Sol. “They are the next generation of journalists, and I believe it’s important to invest, train and empower youth who are eager to learn and to make a difference in their communities.”

One of them is Dean Welliver, who needed something extracurricular to do after leaving his traditional high school in favor of online classes due to bullying. At South Kern Sol he learned how to interview people, write story ledes, craft narratives and bring attention to issues important to him and his community.

Welliver wrote stories about school funding policy, how disciplinary actions impacted students of color and the killing of a transgender woman in Bakersfield.

Today Welliver, 23, is about to graduate from UC Berkeley with a degree in sociology and serves on the President’s Youth Council of the California Endowment, South Kern Sol’s chief funder. He gives Olaguez and South Kern Sol great credit for how far he’s come.

“She’s very encouraging and she’s one of those people who doesn’t just say, ‘Let the youth lead,’ she actually does let the youth lead,” Welliver said. “She takes seriously your ideas , what you’re passionate about, and she’s able to help you learn these journalistic skills and community engagement skills while also working on topics important to you.”

Dean Welliver tackled stories about school funding, campus disciplinary practices and the death of a transgender woman as a youth reporter for South Kern Sol. He’s about to graduate from UC Berkeley and hopes to teach someday, perhaps at his alma mater Bakersfield College. — Dean Welliver tackled stories about school funding, campus disciplinary practices and the death of a transgender woman as a youth reporter for South Kern Sol. He’s about to graduate from UC Berkeley and hopes to teach, perhaps at Bakersfield College.

Bakersfield College History Professor Oliver Rosales, who nominated Olaguez for the Wendy Wayne award, said she she’s not only producing young journalists but young leaders. Last year a group of BC students had an internship experience at South Kern Sol and then did a number of speaking engagements on campus.

“You’re talking about young people, particularly from rural backgrounds who may not be citizens, whose parents aren’t citizens, who develop the courage to speak publicly about their stories, their family’s stories, about policies that impact their lives,” he said. “That’s a real deliverable.”

And not to knock on the mainstream media, Rosales said, but South Kern Sol also plugs a local media gap in terms of what is covered and who covers it.

“In the Bay Area or L.A., there’s much more of a diverse media landscape,” he said. “And I think South Kern Sol has done a good job tapping communities that might not get opportunities to tell stories.”