{"id":31168,"date":"2022-07-31T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2022-07-31T15:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/hi-lo\/?p=30000027602"},"modified":"2022-07-29T10:48:55","modified_gmt":"2022-07-29T17:48:55","slug":"long-beach-student-stars-in-upcoming-documentary-the-youth-governor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/long-beach-student-stars-in-upcoming-documentary-the-youth-governor","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach student stars in upcoming documentary &#8216;The Youth Governor&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">Bayo Collins is a junior at UC Berkeley, but a younger version of himself is about to be introduced to America in a few weeks. Collins is one of the stars of \u201cThe Youth Governor,\u201d an upcoming documentary from filmmakers Matthew and Jaron Halmy.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The documentary was filmed during Collins\u2019 junior year as a student at Poly High School when he participated in the YMCA Youth &amp; Government program. The film was produced by Blumhouse and will be distributed by Greenwich Entertainment, the documentary powerhouse behind Free Solo and other acclaimed docs.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The documentary has been making the rounds on the festival circuit and was an official selection at the Cleveland International Film Festival, the Phoenix Film Festival and the MKE Film Festival. &#8220;The Youth Governor&#8221; will be released in theaters, and streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple TV on Aug. 26.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The trailer, which includes clips of Collins on campus at Poly, was released on Tuesday:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Youth Governor | Official Trailer\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/a1FVAmoG9vs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cIt\u2019s going to be weird to have people meet me at that age,\u201d said Collins. \u201cI just saw the doc for the first time. Watching it I\u2019m like, \u2018I would\u2019ve said this differently, I would\u2019ve done that differently.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The documentary chronicles a year of the California YMCA Youth &amp; Government program, which sees almost 5,000 high school students travel to Sacramento each year to take over the state capitol building and create their own model state government. Teens create their own versions of courts and a state assembly. There are even lobbyists and an election for youth governor.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Collins participated through the Fairfield Family YMCA, where he now works during summers home from college. He and his brother first got involved in the program because of a chance encounter his mother had.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cMy mom kept us in something all the time, and while she was at a hotel she saw students walking around in suits,\u201d Collins said. \u201cShe said, \u2018What is this? I want my boys in this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">As it turned out, the YMCA down the street from their home had the program and she signed her sons up. Quickly, Collins and his brother were networking with Long Beach Councilman Al Austin, who volunteers with the program, and were succeeding in the Youth &amp; Government hierarchy.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI wrote a speech on gun control and got up and did it in front of 1,500 people,\u201d said Collins. \u201cI realized I had a skillset I didn\u2019t know I had. This program changed the entire trajectory of my life, it touched every part of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10000073726\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10000073726\" style=\"width: 1110px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10000073726\" src=\"https:\/\/img.lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/29103636\/Screen-Shot-2022-07-26-at-2.38.38-PM-1110x578.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1110\" height=\"578\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-10000073726\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poly High School as shown in a trailer for the new documentary &#8220;The Youth Governor.&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Collins\u2019 humor and charisma helped him rocket up through the ranks of the statewide program; he would eventually be one of a few dozen from California selected to participate in the YMCA\u2019s national Youth &amp; Government conference. Although he only enrolled as a sophomore, he found himself as one of the four finalists for youth governor his junior year, which is when he embarked on a campaign in Sacramento among other teens that became the subject of the upcoming documentary.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cThe people who were running against me, it was their whole life. Some of the people in the program had been dreaming about it and working on it for years and years,\u201d he said. \u201cI just popped up and took over. The Long Beach delegation wasn\u2019t really known like that, but my friends and I put us on the map.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Without spoiling anything in the documentary, Collins said his experience in Sacramento was incredibly educational as far as government and was influential in his decision to not pursue that as a career path post-college.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI would just say it was very realistic in terms of the good but also in learning about the bad parts of politics,\u201d said Collins, who is an interdisciplinary business\/pre-law major at Berkeley. \u201cThe program gave me a really good idea of what it\u2019s like, and it also helped me realize there\u2019s other ways of making change. I\u2019m still figuring out what my thing is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The film chronicles his campaign to be elected &#8220;youth governor&#8221; of a model state government program the YMCA runs each year at the California Capitol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":72096,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[926,982,31853],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[22204],"class_list":["post-31168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","tag-documentary","tag-long-beach-poly","tag-poly-high-school","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31168"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=31168"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=31168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}