“I am here today to recognize the importance of education for young people,” said Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogart at the opening ceremony of the Adelante Young Men Conference on Nov. 9. More than 1000 young men, including 14 students and three parents from Clark, attended the AYM Conference which was held at Pasadena Community College.

According to Stella Murga, the executive director of the Pasadena Youth Center, the AYM is “the largest college and career fair for young Hispanic men in Southern California.” There were more than 50 workshops. All participators chose three of the available workshops to attend.

Sophomore Luke Burbidge primarily attended the conference with an interest in the scholarship opportunities that were being advertised. A majority of the offered scholarships came from the Hispanic Scholars fund, various colleges, and special interests groups like Planned Parenthood.

Senior Christian Mendoza chose the workshops based on his career plans in law. “I went to this one where an L.A. superior court judge talked about the judicial system and such,” said Mendoza. “I went to that one because I’m interested in law and the judge had great stories to tell.”

Burbidge was most interested in the entrepreneurship workshop the most. “Entrepreneurship is one of those things where you never know if it might happen or not,” said Burbidge. He said that he would most likely consider it as a major part of his future career plans.

Although this was Mendoza’s first time going to a conference focused towards Hispanics, he said that he enjoyed the experience because he received a lot of useful information. “Everyone was excited to be there and it just added to the overall experience,” he said.

“I would definitely go again,” said junior Angello Pinedo. “I’m sure there will be new workshops and there were a lot of workshops that I wanted to go to that I didn’t get the chance to go to.” Pinedo was interested in going to a management workshop, but instead chose workshops that would provide more use to his future goals. He attended two workshops on aerospace engineering.

Counselor Susan Howe organized Clark’s participation in the event. The event is hosted by Adelante, a year-round program that aims to encourage Latino boys and girls to become leaders and succeed in a post-high school education. The program provides conferences to educate young people to achieve goals and challenge themselves.