by Cindy Yi, Campaign 2000/Family Service Toronto Youth Rep
There is no better way to sum up the day-long conference other than to take from the list of one-word answers we all came up with at the end of the day. Going around the room, we all came up with one word to describe how we felt about everything, including: inspired, invigorated, motivated, educated, humbled, empowered, well-informed, thankful, privileged, lucky, excited, optimistic, etc.
The day passed by so quickly.
The morning was spent working on an exercise in which we had to come up with policies or issues that affected us in positive or negative ways, recently. A lot of great things came up (some of the things I hadn’t known about) that covered areas from the environment, to youth employment, to the tuition rebate, to Bill C-10, Bill C-45, the recent Ontario teachers’ strike, etc. We got to talk about all of these things, discuss them, learn about them and figure out what we didn’t like or liked about them.
The afternoon was spent going more in-depth into the new agenda for children, youth and families — for the most part, we looked at the position papers that had already been produced and got into groups to talk about what were the strengths, the weaknesses, and what WE would change about them if we could.
One of our last exercises involved coming up with our “own” agenda and picking out which issues we felt were the most important. There was a lot of stuff on there that I agreed with, but our group also made some tweaks to the existing agenda. Going around the room, we heard some great ideas that had me thinking “YES that should be on there” and “YES that should be changed!”
At the end of it, one group came up with a really comprehensive list and one-by-one, each of us got to attach 3 stickers to the top 3 issues we felt were the most important. This was hard to do, because for one, picking just 3 out of all the issues I think are important to youth today was not enough, and for another, because I think people tended to gravitate to the issues that were closest to their heart. For me, this meant prioritizing child/youth/family poverty, mental health & well-being, and youth violence issues.
Reflecting on the day, the most exciting and most inspiring times occurred when we were discussing things as one big group — 14 (1 from yesterday was not there) of us together — and not in our smaller, more intimate groups. Whether it was bouncing one idea off of another, or responding and disagreeing to something someone else said, the sheer amount of knowledge that the people in our group possessed was astounding. You could tell they came from all walks of life and had all kinds of positive and negative experiences — yet, they weren’t pessimistic in any kind of way. These people, by virtue of the social problems and issues that they saw facing youth in Canada, actually felt empowered to do more.
And that was why each and every one of us were there in that room.
Even though honestly, I hadn’t known what to expect at all before the conference, I felt myself carried away by all the energy that our group generated and feeling motivated by everybody else’s passions. It was truly inspiring — there is no other word for it.
One of the most rewarding parts of the day was when the NACY vice-chair (who sat in for most of the conference, listening in on all of our discussions) told us how impressed she was with our work, and said that she was going to make a concerted effort to bring us all back together again. This really stood out to me. The thought of carrying forward our group’s efforts and valuing our work so much that they wanted to bring us in again — just wow.
One person afterwards said outloud, “Finally. Finally it feels like someone is listening,” echoing all of our thoughts in unison.
It’s easy to get caught up in lofty ideals and a utopian view of what we’d like our society to look like, and how we’d like to go about accomplishing that though. I kept as rational and down-to-earth a mind as possible throughout all of the exercises — trying to be the “anchor” in the group. But as someone who thinks very realistically and doesn’t prefer to pretend that there is unlimited money in the world or that everyone is as generous as we’d like them to be, more than anything this weekend reminded me of the kinds of ideas and energy and optimism that youth bring to the table. It renewed my faith in youth involvement and engagement, truthfully. There are youth out there who care deeply about being engaged in the community and actively involved with social change. A group such as ours can and DID bring so many new perspectives and dialogues and criticisms worth paying attention to.
Really one of the most valuable and well-spent weekends I can remember and will take with me for the future — can’t wait to see what the rest of our group members will do in the future, as a group and as individuals (big things, I am sure of it).