If there's one thing I've definitely taken away from my time on the 蜜桃视频appYouth Council, it's that youth are hard to reach.
One of my goals on the has always been to reach and support every youth in our community, rather than just appealing to a small percentage of youth. I believe that my responsibility as a 蜜桃视频appYouth Council member is to speak for all youth equally—to represent every one of our youth's unique perspectives in the community the best I can. To honour this belief, I always try to look at how we can affect every youth with our initiatives, and how we can target every youth at once.
However, it's not easy to target all youth at once with just one initiative—in fact, it's pretty much impossible. Even if we managed to cover the cost of every youth's bus pass in Squamish, there would still be at least one youth complaining about the colour of the bus pass.
When we first sat down as a council to decide on our plan for the year, I strongly argued for targeting youth through smaller actions rather than from one big event. Instead of throwing all of our budget at one big event, I argued that an assortment of small events and actions would better target the different demographics of youth in our community, and that the variety of events would appeal to every group of youth. Other council members felt the same, and agreed that numerous events would allow each council member to create something that they truly felt passionate about, and would allow them to achieve what they wanted to through the youth council.
Since the start of the year, we've organized a few small actions throughout the community. In January, we put sticky notes bearing positive and supportive messages throughout Don Ross Middle School and Howe Sound Secondary—some of which are still up in May. In February, we put on a skate night at Brennan Park Recreation Centre, where we gathered food and drink donations from local businesses and gave out free food to the 150+ youth who attended.
Now, we're taking over the Brackendale Art Gallery on Sunday, May 4 to put on a free youth entrepreneurship market,Celebrating 蜜桃视频appYouth Excellence, our new Cub's Den—a battle between local organizations for a micro-grant—and a youth awards night celebrating youth and those impacting youth.
Through organizing several different initiatives around the community, we've been able to better engage youth from different demographics. Perhaps the key to engaging with youth is through catering to their wishes and needs. We should figure out what each individual youth wants, instead of what just one or two specific groups of youth want. It should be our responsibility as 蜜桃视频appYouth Council members to speak up for those who don't use their voice, and to advocate on their behalf—it should be our responsibility to advocate for every youth's interests, and not just our friends' or the majority's. Personally, I think it's working quite well.
Find out more and register for the May 4th event on or on the 蜜桃视频appYouth Council social media,and the
Grant Boguski is a local high school student and a member of the 蜜桃视频appYouth Council. He graduates this year.
