Abstract: My name is shayne Veluya and i am eighteen years old. since i was 16, i have been a youth researcher with the yehey project on youth’s experiences of sexuality. i’m currently a freshman at cuny’s hunter college and will be majoring in nursing. i was born in the Philippines but i migrated to the united states when i was three. growing up in Queens, new york has shaped me into the person that i am today. Being a new yorker toughens your skin. you would think that my parents would be more lenient because they raised me here but they brought their traditional roots and i was stuck living in a strict household. however, i cannot complain because my upbringing has taught me to be more of a responsible person instead of being the typical teenager that goes out all the time and throws everything away. My parents and i have a good relationship but not the kind that i wish i could have with them. it’s difficult when my mindset is different from my parents’ mindset. sometimes they forget that i grew up in america, not in the Philippines. This was primarily why i wanted to become part of the yehey project, to get involved with the community and figure out a better way to communicate with my family. First off, i would like to say that Valerie’s paper was very well put together. When we started the project, we ourselves didn’t know that we would do all that we did. all the aspects covered will probably open up the eyes of many others in our community and other communities. our hope in our project and work was to help other people realize what Filipino youth are going through. as i read through the paper i couldn’t help but nod my head because i can completely see myself in the things mentioned. i totally relate to many of the findings. i’m very impressed with the results and of all the information that we were able to gather. When we were actually doing the research, i felt like we made a lot of difference, so when we got to put our input into this paper, it helped us get our message across differently. i think that this will help anyone realize, be it parents or youth, how hard it is to get the courage to finally speak up and talk about what they feel. i liked the whole Friday night concept where the youth of the yehey project come to the Philippine Forum and just talK. i can personally say that sometimes “home” isn’t where we want to be. at times i feel like i’m trapped in a cage where i’m