Credit: Sophia Nguyen

Senior Sophia Nguyen speaks about her experience in METCO. The speech was written for the “This Is Our House” assembly, led by jamele adams.

Editors’ note: This piece is guest writer Sophia Nguyen’s speech from the “This Is Our House” assembly, delivered on March 4. In response to the prompt, “What do Love, Inclusion and Trust mean to you?” Nguyen reflects on her experience in the METCO program and dedicates her speech to classmates Zuriya Lopes and Rejoice Ejims.

Something you may or may not know about me is that I’ve been participating in METCO for about 10 years, and it’s a program that buses me from my home in Boston to Wayland and back, about 40 miles of travel a day or 3 hours of commuting.

I’m going to tell you a little story about why METCO exists, why I think the foundational Love, Inclusion and Trust manifests itself in a revolutionary 60-year-old program like METCO, and why you should care about those ideals.

METCO exists in response to de facto segregation. It exists in response to centuries of systemic racial oppression that led to redlining and concentration of poverty in communities of color.

But the thing about METCO is that it’s a beautiful, beautiful program. It was created by Black mothers who, as women of color, could not stand that their children were receiving an inferior and underfunded education. In that era, they branched off and created opportunity that allowed for their children to attain higher education in schools with higher graduation rates and amazing funding and amazing teachers.

And that’s what happened to me. I live in poverty. I’m low-income. I can’t afford to live in Wayland. I may not be African American or Caribbean American, which was the background of the founders of the METCO program, but I owe my success to their brilliant contributions.

METCO is the reason why I was accepted to college and why I will be the first person in my family to go to college.

Because the people in this building loved me enough to care about my journey. And because 60 years ago, those women loved their children so much that they fought for them, and in turn, they fought for me too.

And the reason why I’m telling you about my story and METCO is because you were and will be built up by people like those mothers. Who care about your story and your future and invest in you to come here to this country and succeed in this world.

Love, Inclusion and Trust isn’t a sudden sentiment made up for the present day. It’s a sentiment that echoes throughout history. In the words of Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison: “You are moving in the direction of freedom, and the function of freedom is to free somebody else.”

So even when I graduate this year, and even when I am gone, after 10 years of being in this district, I want you to please be kind to each other. Please be good to one another, even those you are unfamiliar with. I speak to you today because I want to point out the constellation we share.

We are bound together like stars under a single journey: We have to recognize the opportunities we inherit, and it is our duty to illuminate the path for others by caring for them as much as we care about our own children in our community.

You might just change someone’s life, just like how the mothers of METCO changed mine.