Listen to the closing panel discussion.
View a photo gallery of the event.
Over 120 Middle Tennessee youth actively engaged in improving their communities convened at Vanderbilt Law School Oct. 15 to share their experiences and discuss strategies for empowering their peers.
“We organized this event to bring together youth organizations from around the city to look at youth engagement models so that they can take these ideas back to their communities to effect change,” Michelle Crowley, co-coordinator of the Tennessee Youth Advisory Council, a group of current and former foster youth that advocates for children in the foster care system, said.
The forum was part of Family Reunion 12, an all-day conference focusing on education Oct. 16 at the Vanderbilt Student Life Center.
Participating groups included Hands on Nashville Teen Volunteer Corps, University School of Nashville, USSAA, Rocketown, Tennessee Youth Advisory Council, the Mayor‘s Youth Council, Highly Intelligent Persons, the Tennessee Youth Leadership Forum and more.
“We work to keep kids away from drugs, alcohol, violence and gangs, and work to break down barriers among different groups,” participant Amanda Womble, Students Taking a Right Stand or STARS, said. “We‘re here today to learn about other students‘ opinions.”
Richard Lerner, Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science at Tufts University, opened the event and lauded Middle Tennessee youth for setting a national example for youth engagement.
“Too often we define success with kids as the absence of ‘bad.‘ That‘s incredibly dispiriting to youth, and it‘s also patently false,” Lerner said. “What we need to do in America is to look at youth not as problems to be managed but as resources to be developed. And where can we find examples of engaged, empowered youth? In Middle Tennessee.
“You and your colleagues are rich examples of empowered young people making a difference in their community,” he said.
The conference was organized around three topics, equity and justice, youth voice, and preparation for and transition to adulthood, which the participants addressed during panel and breakout discussions. The issues they discussed ranged from living with disability, teaching young people how to voice their needs, financial challenges, education, discrimination, employment, mentoring and teamwork. A key component of the event was simply bringing all of the groups together in one room to share their experiences and learn from one another.
“They all have the same issues – they‘re all concerned with equity, they all have shared frustration with the lack of youth voice, and they‘re all going to transition to adulthood,” Andrew Shookhoff, event organizer and associate director of the Vanderbilt Child and Family Policy Center , said. “There is so much opportunity for these youth to be a really positive lobbying force on these issues. What a powerful coalition that would be.”
Tiara French, a former foster youth and member of the Tennessee Youth Advisory Council, said her experience in foster care motivated her to help other children.
“It‘s my story that keeps me grounded in what I do. Not being able to forget where I came from, and not being able to forget that I‘m not the last one that‘s going to have to go through that, unless I do something different to change it,” she said. “Someone has to change the system. Why not me?”
“Change is a process, and it takes 24-7 shifts,” Sharon Shields, professor of the practice of health promotion and education, said. “No matter what it is that you do in the process, you are making change.”
The event closed with a panel discussion by Shields and representatives and participants of Common Cents, an elementary school engagement program founded in 1991 in New York City in which children have raised and distributed to community organizations over $4.5 million which they collected in annual “penny harvests” in their communities.
The youth forum was sponsored by the Vanderbilt Child and Family Policy Center and Tufts University Applied Developmental Sciences Institute with support from Oasis Center, Peabody College of Education and Human Development, Tennessee Council on Developmental Disabilities, Vanderbilt Center for Health Policy, Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, Vanderbilt Law School and Vanderbilt News Service.
Media contact: Melanie Moran, (615) 322-NEWS
melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu