It is commonly said that a community's youth represent the future but they can be about the present as well. Youth Speak 2011, held by Yorkton Understanding Minds of Many Youth (YUMMY), recently provided youth in the city with an opportunity to discuss what matters most to them and connect with adults in the community.
Tyler Pindus with YUMMY says the two day event went better than anticipated, with over 250 youth attending the summit. The two days featured guest speakers from Virginia talking about what is happening in their community, and attendees were given the opportunity to vote on and discuss issues which were important to them.
The three top issues for youth in Yorkton were a lack of things to do in the city, poor road quality and youth not being respected by adults in the community. Pindus says that there were sessions where youth discussed who needed to be involved in addressing the issues, why they were a problem, and what needs to be done to change the situation.
One of the most encouraging parts of the event was seeing the youth get involved, Pindus says. He says the involvement exceeded expectations both in numbers and in how active the attendees were, and that there was a lot of progress made in discussing the issues that mattered most to youth in the community.
"Everybody has different values, everybody has different wants, and everybody has different needs. Over the past two days we have discussed common issues, common goals and common solutions. From what has been happening, we have found out that there are specific solutions that could work in our community, and from now on we are going to meet and try to implement the solutions in any way we can," Pindus says.
Pindus says that events such as Youth Speak 2011 are vital to get any initiatives involving youth to get off the ground.
"If you want anything to happen in your own community that involves youth, you need the youth to be involved," Pindus says.
With the success of the first youth summit, Pindus hopes it can be an annual event and a model for involving the community's youth in decisions that matter to them.
"We are hoping that the adults in the community as well as city council and the mayor see this as a model and that it was very successful, and that there is an initiative from both the YUMMY group and their adult supporters," Pindus says.
The event is a way to bridge the gap between the youth and adults in the community, and Pindus says that the goal now is to continue working towards implementing the solutions discussed at the event.
