CURRENT POSITION Youth Justice Director, Collective Action for Youth DEGREE B.A. Public Policy, University of Texas at San Antonio, 2015 FAST FACT Cantu served on President Obama’s 21st Century Police Task Force, and has been honored with his own days by San Antonio (February 13) and Houston (October 23). FOLLOW dietercantu.com; @dieter_cantu; linkedin.com/in/dietercantu Photo courtesy of Dieter Cantu

Books as Blueprints

Dieter Cantu knows the power of education. And after having spent three years incarcerated in Texas’s juvenile justice system, he also knows the difficulties teens face getting an education in those systems.

“It seemed like there was a void when I was incarcerated as a youth,” he says. “Skills or trades, job opportunities, nothing was there. You get your GED or pursue a high school diploma, and then for the duration of your sentence, you just do nothing.”

Cantu earned a G.E.D. while incarcerated, and a BA in Public Policy from the University of Texas at San Antonio after his release. He launched a career of advocacy, working as a Criminal Justice Organizer at the Texas Organizing Project, as a liaison to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, and as Youth Justice Director at the Collective Action for Youth, a Houston agency working with young people who are in both the child protective and juvenile justice systems.

Through Cantu’s Books to Incarcerated Youth Project, he provides resources that weren’t available when he was a teen. Books that his brother sent him then—nonfiction about trades or even learning sign language—helped set the template.

“From there, I started creating a blueprint for myself—goals, where I wanted to be, projected timelines once I was released,” he says. “I stuck to it, and it was because I had books available to me.”

Partnerships with multiple universities have enabled Cantu to expand the program throughout Texas. Paired with a mentorship and pen-pal program he has launched with his Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity brothers, Cantu is helping incarcerated youth envision possibilities for their futures.