Robin helped to co-found the Leading with Debate Fellowship to train a new generation of advocates.

If you’re looking for BAUDL alum Robin Bonner these days, you are likely to find her in the corridors of San Francisco City Hall, crusading for a dropout prevention initiative she helped design from the ground up. Yet this impressive college freshman, who has become one of the most respected voices on the San Francisco Youth Commission, was once herself on the edge of dropping out.

Robin entered Washington High School during an incredibly hard time in her life. With her father absent, she was in the care of a single mom who worked long hours to support her children. At school she felt alienated, finding her strong voice always silenced in large traditional classrooms. “I always had this critical eye, and strong opinions – and at Washington, they weren’t trying to hear that. I got kicked out of my share of classrooms, and when I came back to class I felt blacklisted, like they didn’t want me participating.”

Though her big voice got Robin into trouble at Washington, in the BAUDL it became her greatest strength. When she transferred to Downtown High School, the school’s debate team was a place for her to flourish and to find a home. In her words, “it was what got me to come out of my shell; it was everything I needed at that time in my life. Debate showed me that my natural aggression was something I could channel to make a difference.” Finding a place for her brilliance to take root, she rapidly rose to BAUDL’s highest levels of competition.

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Kyla Wheatfall is a co-founder of the Bay Area Urban Debate League. In the summer of 2008, she joined a crew of only 24 other brave youth at the BAUDL’s first-ever summer debate institute at Castlemont High School. “Ever since then, I was a debater,” Kyla says. “I saw Denzel in the Great Debaters, tried it out for myself, and knew that I had to walk the same path.”

Kyla inspires dozens more youth to take up the challenge of debate as a BAUDL intern.

Kyla has come a long way since those early days of debate, and she has brought dozens of young people along with her. During her junior year, Kyla was named captain of the Skyline High debate team, and traveled to Chicago for the Urban Debate League National Championships. She let her loud voice shine bright in public debates, recruited others to join the team, and racked up victory after victory. By the end of her junior year, the Skyline debate team was a dominating force in the BAUDL.

For Kyla, “debate helped give me the confidence to hold my own in classes. It helped me channel my energy toward achievement and away from trouble.” During her senior year, Kyla took her debate skills and her academic achievements to a new level. Where once she struggled to pass classes, she began bring home As and Bs on report cards.

No one could have been happier with her progress than Kyla’s grandmother, who passed away the day after seeing Kyla featured as a speaker to an audience of thousands in the Skyline High graduation ceremony. “She always told me that she wanted to see me graduate, and then she would be done,” says Kyla, who still feels her grandma’s loss deeply. “I am so glad she got to see me give that speech and walk the stage with diploma in hand.”

Now Kyla works as an intern at BAUDL, mentors at one of the schools in the league and also attends the College of Alameda as a full time student. She plans to get her B.A. in Psychology, with a minor in Political Science to keep her love for debate alive. “BAUDL can do so much for young people,” she says. “I am ready to do my best to see it expand further and make even more of an impact.”