PA Youth Advocacy Leader Luna Plaza Receives YWCA Equity Award

Luna Plaza accepts the YMCA Equity Award virtually November 4.

Luna Plaza, a former youth leader of the PA Youth Advocacy Network, recently received the YWCA Greater Pittsburgh's 2022 Emerging Leader Award, recognizing a young person, age 24 or younger, whose voice and actions interrupt the status quo to make a difference in their community by serving as a leader in any way to ensure that equity stays in the forefront.

Plaza is a community organizer and social justice advocate who has been a committed youth advocate for mental health and accessibility. She was instrumental in building the PA Youth Advocacy Network's statewide advocacy platform and making sure equity was embedded in that platform. She has spoken at the PA Health Equity Summit and NAMI Keystone Pennsylvania's Child, Adolescent and Transition Age Youth Mental Health Conference, and NAMICon.

She is also a co-founder of Asian Solidarity Alliance as well as working with Abortion Defense Committee, Casa San Jose, Justice for Jim Rogers, Human Rights Student Action Network, and the Stop the Station Campaign. She is a recent graduate of Pittsburgh CAPA and is currently attending University of Miami majoring in psychology and anthropology.