On a recent autumn morning, as sunlight skips across the Boise River and warms the nearby foothills to a golden glow, more than 130 students gather for a daylong summit to plot their community’s future. Their mission: Imagine an even better place to grow up.
“You’re here to create a vision. You have the power to make it happen,” says Amy Denton, a leader of the event billed as Youth Speak Out: A Call to Action! At 24, with wide blue eyes and bobbed hair, Denton looks only slightly older than the teens she’s hoping to inspire. A recent graduate of Boise State University, Denton is an ambassador in a program called Youth Engaged in Service (YES), part of the Points of Light Foundation and the Idaho Commission on National and Community Service. She’s committed to helping young Idahoans develop leadership skills and connecting them with service-learning opportunities throughout her home state. Today’s summit, sponsored by YES and other community organizations, is intended to elicit a list of key concerns from local youth and generate action plans.
Meeting in a convention center on The Grove, a brick plaza in the heart of Boise’s recently revitalized downtown, the teens represent middle schools and high schools from throughout Ada County. Many are already involved in student government and other school leadership activities, but a few have never before had a chance to speak up so publicly. Four students who attend alternative schools in the Boise School District, for instance, “are upbeat about this opportunity to have a voice,” observes Edward Mowry, a counselor at Mountain Cove, an alternative high school. Nontraditional leaders have been especially encouraged to attend.
As she looks around the conference room, Jayne Ho-Setantha sees past the typical teen accoutrements of baggy jeans, fleece vests, big shoes, and earrings. She sees a roomful of individuals, “each with a unique contribution. They all have gifts to share.” Director of Community Youth Connection — a nonprofit, countywide agency that gives young people opportunities to voice opinions, influence change, and receive recognition — Ho-Setantha is also a mother of three children, ranging in age from 14 to 21. So she knows this territory. Before coming to Com mu nity Youth Connection, the transplanted New Yorker channeled the energy of at-risk youth into arts projects for the Idaho Commission on the Arts. She knows that creative energy can be transforming. She’s also a big believer in building on the strengths of young people. “Instead of asking what’s wrong with kids,” Ho-Setantha explains, “I like to ask, ‘What’s right? What are their talents?’”
Given an opportunity like the summit, students don’t hesitate to put their leadership skills to work. Each table is led by a teenager who has been trained to be an effective facilitator, to lead without dominating the discussion. Within minutes, the guarded hush of kids who have never met before gives way to animated discussions.
Facilitators ask: “What are the biggest problems facing kids today?”
And the answers bubble up, often backed by first-person narratives or stories about friends struggling to find their way. Kids in Boise — where schools are strong, the local economy is thriving, and parks and outdoor recreation opportunities abound — still shoulder a familiar list of adolescent worries: fitting in; feeling like you have a place; getting along with your parents; cliques; gangs; feeling harassed by police; tension between skaters and jocks; jobs that don’t pay enough and entertainment that costs too much; stress; drugs and alcohol; peer pressure; prejudice because of how you look, dress, or act.
Once they’ve extracted this long list of concerns, facilitators press for active solutions. They ask, “What can we do about these problems?” The assembled teens take on this question with such energy, it’s as if they’ve been saving up the answers their whole lives.
