In a World Where Youth Hold the Power

Youth In Action has created a place where youth in the community of Providence can express their voice and be heard as well as make positive change not only in themselves but in their community.  They are able to live our their dreams and goals while having a say in what goes on in the community around them.  Since 1997 YIA has created this space by bringing a program called "Leading With" which makes them feel equal to adults and work hand and hand with adults.  A lot of times youth feel like they can either feel like they have hope or they are hopeless.  A lot of times the youth in a community feel overlooked and feel like they don't have a voice to make change.  But there are youth out there that look past that and have a strong sense of what they need to do and what they need to say and YIA has a wonderful program that does that.  They bring awareness to issues that most adults have a hard time talking about such as race, inequality, homeless, etc.  YIA brings these issues to light and they youth make the decisions in the program and run the facility.  They are the ones out in the trenches and making things happen.  Adults tend to overlook youth and think that they don't know what is going on and YIA lets people know that youth have a voice and see what is going on more than we know.  It also gives them the tools to speak their mind and speak their ideas and a lot of the times the youth have good ideas on how to address social issues.  Youth (children, young adults) hear and see more then we know and can understand more then we think they can state the facts and the issues better then a lot of adults.  As adults we get blinded by a lot of different things and try to say things to keep the peace where young adults speak their mind and say some of the things that adults might not say and that is what needs to happen in order to make change.  I believe in having the conversations especially the difficult ones and bringing the issues to the light and letting people draw their own opinion and that is what YIA does very well.  If you have the conversations people might not agree with you but at least they can form their own opinion on the issue and you did your job by making them passionate about a particular situation and educating.  They state the facts and bring the facts out and let people make their choices.  I love the part of the article where it said "I argue with someone at YIA at least once a week- but in a good way.  In the world, there are a lot controversial topics like race, faith, abortion, or gay marriage.  YIA is filled with different opinions and beliefs, but the trust we have in each other makes it easier to get past the controversy and find solutions."  This was my favorite paragraph from the reading because it shows that you can have a healthy argument and debate about difficult subject and still come out the other end and find solutions.  I love the fact that they talk about these issues because a lot of people think that youth are not old enough or mature enough to talk about certain subjects but yet they really are and can really have a good opinion on the issues and come up with solutions.  I relate what to what YIA does and love that they do it.  We try to do this at the non-profit I am a part of.  We try to make the youth in the community of Oakland Beach aware of the issues that their community faces and not only have the conversations but what we can do together to make it better.  It starts by showing the youth how to love the community they live in and if they care about things such as crime, littering, and vandalism they can start by doing community cleanups and showing people around the community that they are doing something to clean it up and care about the place they live.  It slowly starts to begin a trend and less of those things occur.  I look forward to learning more about what YIA does and hopefully getting some good suggestions on how to bring some of their qualities to the youth I work with in a future job as well as in the non-profit as well.