Advocacy, Poetry, and Purpose: Spotlight on 2024 Yes I Can Awardee Helena Donato-Sapp

When Helena Donato-Sapp received a 2024 Yes I Can Award from the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), the recognition came at a time when she needed encouragement most.

“I was in an unsupportive school environment,” Helena shared. “The CEC award made me know that I was on the right path and to keep pressing on.”

For more than 45 years, the Yes I Can Awards have recognized children and youth with disabilities whose leadership, achievement, and advocacy are making a difference in their communities.

Since receiving the award, Helena, now a rising senior at the Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana, California, and an award-winning Youth Poet Laureate, has continued using her voice to advocate for disability inclusion, educational equity, and the power of young people to enact change.

Poetry has become one of Helena’s most powerful forms of expression. She is especially proud of a forthcoming piece in Foundations, Resistance, and Futures - Reconceptualizing/Reimagining Disability in Mathematics Education. “I wrote my favorite piece of poetry about my dyscalculia,” Helena shared, noting that she used “a poetry form called ‘leetspeak’ where numbers replace some letters, making it difficult for a reader to read quickly and comprehend deeply.” The poem is titled Dy5c41cu1i4.

Helena’s scholarship also challenges assumptions about who gets to be seen as a scholar in forthcoming publication Thinking Spatially Geographically About Black Girlhoods:  Researching the Significance of Space and (Home) Place and Space in Black Girls’ Education. In her chapter titled “Brick-by-Brick: The Building of a 14-Year-Old Black Girl Scholar,” Helena “confronts the notion that neurodiverse youth can’t do scholarship and shows step-by-step just exactly how I did it.”

Outside of publishing, Helena’s advocacy continues to reach broader audiences. Earlier this year, she was featured in The New York Times in an article discussing the harmful resurgence of the “R-word.” She also recently delivered a TEDx Talk focused on disability inclusion in poetry spaces. This spring, Helena became the youngest university commencement speaker in United States history when she delivered the commencement address at Heritage University, encouraging graduates to view education as an act of resistance and possibility.

While Helena’s accomplishments continue to grow, her message remains grounded in advocacy, creativity, and community. Her journey reflects the lasting impact of the Yes I Can Awards and the importance of recognizing students whose voices are helping shape a more inclusive future.

As Helena shared, “Those of us you honor with the Yes I Can Award continue to do great things long after we receive this prestigious award.”

To learn more about Helena and her work, please visit www.helenalourdes.com. 

The Yes I Can Awards are supported in part by the Yes I Can Fund.