Facilitators (left to right) Hwineko Walkingstick, Ah-li-sha Littlejohn and Candice Craig lead the discussion at the youth forum in Swain County.
Each year, the Southern Growth Policies Board starts a conversation in the South on a particular issue related to economic development. Past forums have revealed an increasing recognition that developing the potential of Southern youth, listening to their views, and inspiring them to take action are critical to the region’s future success.
As a result, the topic this year has been “Youth – the REAL Future of the South,” and youth on the Qualla Boundary and Swain and Jackson counties recently participated in three community forums to help develop strategies that will help the region encourage youth leadership skills, workforce readiness, volunteerism, entrepreneurship and active citizenship. The sessions were sponsored by Cherokee Reservation 4-H, Jackson County 4-H, Swain County 4-H, Cherokee Preservation Foundation and the Cherokee Youth Council
Several common themes emerged from the gatherings:
—Participants are hungry for options that will make their communities more youth-friendly. Students say there is nowhere to go after 5:00 or on weekends. They want places where they can hang out and feel safe.
—Youth are eager to discover their talents and passions, and develop the skills and confidence they need to realize their full potential. Existing programs such as Junaluska Leadership, Talent Search, and Upward Bound focus only on top performing students or have demographic criteria that exclude some students who would like to participate.
—Young people want their elders to better appreciate their value. Decisions affecting young people, from the individual classroom to the community level, are more likely to be understood, accepted, and supported by youth if they feel their input is considered and respected.
—They feel a strong sense of connection to their communities, but they are concerned about job opportunities. Although part-time and summer jobs are readily available in the service and tourism industries and provide needed revenue to the students and their families, those jobs seldom relate to students’ ultimate goals and ambitions. There are very limited opportunities for youth to work one-to-one with mentors in the career fields they to which they aspire to. Students say that such opportunities would help youth create a vision for their futures and could help address the high drop-out rates of our region.
—There is a need for communication and collaboration between existing youth groups. Often youth groups are organized around individual interest themes, but many share similar goals. Youth organizations could benefit from having a systematic way to share ideas, pool resources, plan some common events, and collaborate on projects.
Local youth’s feedback will be used in presentations at Southern Growth’s 2008 annual conference and in a high profile report sharing with Southern governors and regional business leaders and educators. In Western North Carolina, the feedback will be shared with local government and educational leaders.
