Youth Spotlight: Gressia Aguirre Garcia

If you haven’t had the pleasure yet of meeting Gressia Aguirre Garcia, a senior at Battle Mountain High School, then you’ll quickly become as impressed with her as I have in the short time I have known her. She not only exemplifies the youthful spirit of taking action when inspiration strikes, or when one believes strongly that something should be done, she is also gifted with humility, thoughtfulness, and compassion. Throughout her time in high school, Gressia has been a part of cross country, track, TedXVail Youth, National Honors Society, and National English Honors Society. She’s also been working on her seal of biliteracy. In her free time, she enjoys hanging out with friends and family, traveling, and spending time going outside to enjoy and appreciate the local nature while she’s here, before heading off to CU Boulder for college to join the Leeds School of Business. She is a self-proclaimed foodie and enjoys stress-baking to help her relax through finals and

other stressful events. She learned to cook from her grandmother and comes from a family of chefs.

Last year, Gressia became a part of Mountain Youth’s Valley’s Voice where she has been passionate about addressing youth violence in the community and seeing more youth become involved in these efforts. Working with Mountain Youth and YouthPower365, Gressia has launched a youth advisory committee focused on youth-led projects that will instill more conflict resolution skills, empathy and compassion, and make our community a safer place for all. Gressia shared that last year’s events shifted her reality of Eagle County – that she felt like the small town “bubble” had burst for her. She started listening more and realized that there was a lot more going on with youth in Eagle County than she had ever understood. The more she learned, the more she became resolute that it was unfair and something needed to be done about. 

In reaching out to two local youth engagement professionals, this school year Gressia launched the Youth Advisory Committee. This group of approximately 15-20 youth are working on projects to bring more conflict resolution skills to youth in schools, ways to connect youth across the valley beyond rival sporting events, and ways to make parks and public spaces safer for youth. Gressia feels that conflict resolution skills are usually taught in the home but by expanding it to schools, it gets more youth, parents, teachers, and coaches involved and makes these skills more accessible to all youth. She also believes increasing understanding and compassion of others will lead to less violence in our community. The way Gressia talks about compassion and empathy reminded me of another local leader who recently shared about keeping perspective and that the way we see and know others cannot be their full picture. There will always be aspects of other’s lives that we will never know or understand. Holding space for one another, approaching with love and compassion, will help create spaces where people don’t feel isolated, alienated, or threatened. Through these youth-led projects, we will begin to see positive shifts for our community. Cameron Dole, one of the adults supporting the Youth Advisory Committee shares, "Gressia's awareness and commitment to her peers and the world around her is unique for anyone to have. Her passion to change things that 'aren't right' and her drive to actually work on the problems set her apart from many other youth and adults that i've worked with." 

While Gressia is proud of the group that’s stepped forward and joined the advisory committee, she encourages all youth to get involved either with the committee or in their day to day interactions with others. She asks that everyone “be caring and empathetic because everyone’s fighting their own battles. It can be hard to meet people where they’re at, but even halfway can be helpful.” Additionally, she urges, “if you’re passionate about something, go for it, it’s worth the fight. It’s important to trust that everything is happening for you and for a reason – even in tough times – it’s all working out, it’s important to pause projections and realize it can be a redirection.” While Gressia is headed off to college soon, she will continue to advise the council from a far while a successor is found to carry her charge forward. If you want to know more, or get involved, reach out to info@mountainyouth.org