Congresswoman Johnson hosted her Annual Youth Summit and Diversity Dialogue at the Meadows School of Art on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, TX. The Summit brought together students from various ethnicities, religions, and cultures across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and local experts in the fields of diversity and inclusion, mindfulness, and conflict resolution:
Congresswoman Johnson reinforced the message, “we are all global citizens: we didn't choose our parents, we didn’t choose where we were born, or our circumstances, but we can make choices, you can choose to be great.”
Each year as summer concludes, Congresswoman Johnson partners with the Aga Khan Council for Central United States to host this day-long Summit to bring students of diverse communities together to bridge divides by offering a safe environment to constructively address and gain insights into the differences amongst each other while discovering the similarities and celebrating both. The speakers framed their remarks around this year’s theme, “Attitudes of Peaceful Participation and Respect in a World Community.” The Summit participants created and presented a group diversity T-shirt project to express what they learned and how they were individually impacted by the experience.
The students were inspired when Congresswoman Johnson affirmed she was, “in the company of future NASA astronauts, corporate leaders, scientists, and future leaders of the United States,” who she would see on the news one day.
