Student Commentary: Community Issues

The City of LA Commission for Children, Youth, and Their Families and Los Angeles Youth Council in partnership with Constitutional Rights Foundation, convened and facilitated a series of youth forums around Los Angeles in Spring/Summer 2006 to educate young students about public policies and to get their input. CRF trained a group of high school students to help facilitate the youth forums. Elston He, a youth forum facilitator and CRF Forum Journalist, gives us an insider's account of the South L.A. youth forum held on June 10, 2006.

Elston He reflects on his experience as a Youth Input Forum moderator

An editorial posted October 18, 2006.

To Raise A Voice 
Students from all around Los Angeles learned about public policy and how policies affect their daily lives. Then students identified problems in the city, took a closer look at already existing programs addressing those problems, and brainstormed solutions. Student facilitators led the discussions and ensured that everyone’s thoughts and ideas were heard. 

Youth input from the forums is designed to help City of LA Commission for Children, Youth, and Their Families and the L.A. Youth Council to create more informed public policy for youth in the city of Los Angeles.  

 
To Raise A Voice 

Walking up the stairs of Exposition Park Intergenerational Community Complex, (EPICC), I felt excited and a bit nervous. That day I was going to be a facilitator at an L.A. Youth Council forum, part of the City of Los Angeles Commission for Children, Youth and Their Families’ plan for implementing a Youth Policy. This meant that I was going to help facilitate a discussion about the things that the youth of Los Angeles wanted to change or start. Information from this forum would then be put together and hopefully implemented into City of Los Angeles government policy. 
As I entered the sign-in area for the youth forum, I was immediately greeted by smiling, enthusiastic faces. Grabbing a CRF folder (CRF is the Constitutional Rights Foundation, a group that works closely with CYF), I entered the main room in which we would be conducting the day’s activity. Other facilitators (who had also arrived early) and I reviewed a little bit about the endeavors lined up, as we waited for the most important people of the day, the youth, to arrive. They carried with them opinions and thoughts, concerning the city and what they felt needed to be improved. As people began filing in, they took seats at whatever table interested them most; they were not influenced by the designs on the tables, however fascinating they were, but rather by the placards on the tables. Each stated a general issue such as Health and Safety, Job Training, Mentoring, Education, etc.  

The forum started off with short speeches by a Youth Council member, a CYF person, and Jen Cheslock, the program manager for CRF. To get ourselves thinking and to better acquaint ourselves with the other people at our groups, we began working on a few short exercises concerning public policies and how they could be addressed and implemented. After this, the real work began. Choosing a topic from a large list that concerned my table’s focus, Health and Safety, my group started discussing the causes and effects of our problem, racial violence, in an activity called "Picture the Problem." A lively conversation began to emerge, and as a facilitator, I tried to keep the discussion flowing and on topic. If it got stuck on a particular argument or fell silent, it was my job to push the discussion back on focus and prevent unnecessary sidetracking. I also tried to make sure everybody’s opinion was heard and understood by the rest of the group. I did this by asking members to explain their points or add more detail to them. 

When we had finished listing the causes and effects of our problem, we commenced work on examining existing City of Los Angeles programs that addressed our problem. A large packet that outlined these programs included a brief description of each program, a contact, and the types of people served. Although I discovered many programs that I had never known existed, I also found that city programs concerning our problem were inadequate and near non-existent. This fact only reinforced the notion that the youth of Los Angeles were not having enough say in the government’s policy-making process.  

Then, with our work mostly completed, we took a short lunch break. This break was a very relaxing rest; we were able to rejuvenate our energy and talk with each other about nothing in particular. The forum continued after lunch, and we proceeded to discuss some possible ways we could help solve the causes of the problems identified earlier in the forum. Brainstorming solutions for the problems was indeed the hardest part of the forum; problems were easy enough to name, but viable remedies didn’t exactly pop off the top of our heads. We eventually wrote all of our thoughts down on large pieces of paper and taped them to a wall, where all the members participating in the forum could see them. Our paper discussed the causes of racial violence and what it was doing to the community, and listed some possible ways to help reduce the violence, such as cultural education and teaching tolerance. These posters were then used in the final activity, the "Community Walk," where people walked around the room and voted with little sticky-dots for the best solutions on the posters. Finally, when everybody had had the chance to learn about all the different groups’ work that day, we assembled for a few photos.  

By the end I was exhausted, but also glad and satisfied that I had managed to help change something, no matter how small that change may have seemed. Helping the youth get their voices heard was a really rewarding experience for me, and now I look eagerly for a schedule announcing the next meeting.  

 
For more information on helping out with future youth forums or to get involved with CRF, contact Jen Cheslockat 213.316.2108.  

 
Learn more about getting involved with the L.A. Youth Council , check out their website or call 213.978.1840.