Recap: 10/8 Youth Council Town Hall on Turning Advocacy Into Action
This October, Pelham Together’s Youth Council held their annual fall Town Hall during which they reimagined with the community what local youth civic engagement looks like. Inspired by today’s landscape of civic discourse, Pelham Together and the Council are as committed as ever to building civic readiness skills within our youth and preparing them to be leaders in civic forums.
Council members discussed three core pillars—Events & Campaigns, Advocacy, and Outreach—from which they plan to expand, thereby introducing to the community how they are restructuring to become a model for youth civic engagement.
Thus far, Youth Council civic engagement has consisted of Events and Campaigns promoting peer social and emotional wellbeing and youth mental health advocacy. Campaigns such as Tailgate Together, Project Happiness, and Pelham Overnight have been some of the Council’s most effective events to date.
Pillar Two, Advocacy, aims to build upon the Youth Council’s annual trip to Albany for Mental Health Matters Day—where Council members speak to New York State legislators on matters of mental health—by attending both a national conference in Washington D.C. to be a voice for substance-use prevention, as well as local Town Council meetings to advocate on behalf of their peers. The Council also looks forward to developing the inaugural Youth Civic Impact Report, designed to demonstrate to community stakeholders the influence of a year’s effort of promoting peer wellness and youth civic engagement.
The third pillar, Outreach, envisions a Civic Engagement Fair, in which local community-based organizations can connect local youth to civic and service work; and a microgrants program, which would allow the Youth Council to support their peers in bringing ideas to life. Put simply, the Youth Council endeavors to carve a deliberate place in local civic forums for youth voice.
As these are new developments for the Youth Council, members facilitated a dialogue with the community to elicit feedback on how best to build upon these pillars. Community members showed up in force to this Town Hall (thank you!) and gave valuable insight on where they think youth voice is currently most underrepresented, how adults in town can integrate the Council into their networks, and establishing systems for initiatives such as the microgrants program. The conversation was a rich one, leaving the Youth Council members feeling invigorated and ready to implement change.
The Town Hall concluded with an introduction to Pelham Together’s new clinicians, and how to reach their counseling program.