Listen to thisThe mission of the Minnesota Multicultural Youth Corps (MYC) is “to empower youth to make a positive impact on communities through multicultural understandings and collaborations". (MYC Mission Statement, 2002). Three young people and three advisors from the MYC came together on Friday, October 11th, to further engage in the process and discussion of “youth empowerment" mentioned in the program’s mission statement.
We met at “The Friendship House," a space we use often for our meetings. “The Friendship House" is a two-story, fully furnished house owned by a nearby church, which is frequently lent to the MYC free of charge. Even though the space is on the University of Minnesota campus, it is an escape. The house rests on the edges of Dinkytown (a campus hub) but is isolated from the hustle and bustle of campus life “likely due to its large rooms, soft couches, bright lighting, and breezy air circulation. We use this space for MYC full-weekend retreats and although it is beneficial to leave the city in an attempt to become nature-seeking beings, it is a perfect space when resources to hold retreats outside of the city are minimal. We met around dinner and even though pizza was on its way, our stomachs never impeded the planning process.
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The defining goal of the meeting was to outline and design a youth facilitated one-hour program, on a subject of the youths” choice, to be presented at a one-day Diversity Conference for the Southeast District of Minnesota 4-H programs. The advisors” purpose at the meeting was to guide the young people. As an advisor for the MYC, I not only attempted to guide the youth we were working with but I put myself in an observational role as well. As time passed it became quite obvious that, through the youths” deliberations and frustrations, the subject that they would speak on at the conference was “youth empowerment," would be from three angles and three individual perspectives and accounts.
Jody, Franz-Diego, and Amelia, the three MYC youth in charge of building the program for the conference seemed a bit hesitant to indulge in the planning at first; they had not been together in this type of setting for some time and possibly needed time to warm up, reach into their long-term memories, grab the information stored there, and transmit it to the working-memory. It did not take long for them to become engaged.
The transformation occurred when Jody began to express his frustration with general societal views of youth in regards to recent attitudes towards Muslims in the post one-year anniversary of “911"; Jody observed that (a) many of the young people in his surroundings were hesitant to “speak up" against imprudent information and propaganda about Muslims in the aftermath of “911" (provided by our adult world) and that (b) this hesitant nature of young people is due to general actions and attitudes by adults, which he has experienced, that has led young people to believe they are powerless.
Amelia quickly joined in. Her thought on the subject was that, for young people, there is a great mystical process around getting involved “numerous roadblocks exist when young people simply consider getting involved in citizenship action and leadership; this includes but is not limited to available time, available resources, whether friends and family will approve, being accepted, general laziness, and the normal reservations that are present whenever one decides to become involved in a new organization or program.
Franz-Diego took his knowledge of the subject to a post-involvement, post-empowerment level. He recognized that as a young person, he has indeed made changes and contrary to the adult attitudes outlined by Jody, his work has directly affected societal views. What he has fought for, and fights for, is important because, “It directly affects young people".
The subject matter for their conference presentation was vividly solidified. All that was needed was a tangible program outline or model; the MYC director, myself, and Amelia in particular (she often asks for the tangibles, which helps us all), needed that touchable visual. So, the young people decided they would give individual accounts of
(a) what they have done as leaders as outlined by Franz-Diego,
(b) why youth involvement is needed as outlined by Jody,
(c) what worked and did not work, and
(d) how they did/are doing what they did/are doing as outlined by Amelia in regards to the mystic of involvement.
The three of them felt that personal accounts are what have the greatest potential to reach other young people like them. It is a way for young people to relate to one-another, eliminating the mystical process of involvement for young people, outlining miscues from the “adult world," and assuring other young people that becoming an empowered young person is attainable.
In a matter of two hours, three young people from MYC wrote a chapter on “youth empowerment" in the book of citizenship, which has historically ignored young people. They also committed themselves to the further development of their program outside of the meeting. At “The Friendship House," on that particular Friday afternoon, while sinking into a fluffy couch, I witnessed what happens when the “adults" truly act as guides rather than superiors. There was an ethos about our meeting together, stemmed from passionate young people who took everyday frustrations, worked through them, and shaped a wonderful learning atmosphere; their topic was very real, very important to them, and very possible to achieve [youth empowerment].
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My lived-experience as an observer brought me back to my years as a high school student. To some extent, I had attempted to become involved in leadership opportunities yet often held back due to my hopeless [depression] feelings towards life at that period in my journey, which made involvement difficult. Also, my wish to become involved was often because the folks who were involved in my high school were very much those I wished to be accepted by. My hope for involvement was often rooted in psuedo-passionate reasoning; I longed for acceptance through leadership rather than “doing" leadership because I felt passionate about a particular issue, program, or need. I rarely had the opportunity to discuss the issues our MYC youth were discussing at the meeting; and importantly noted: I was also never asked by others to get involved or invited to mindfully process that of which was important to me.
At the meeting, my connection to our MYC youth involved an amount of jealousy. At times, I felt as if I was the high school student I had been over seven years ago, day dreaming about the many “cool" people I could meet by getting more involved and sensing the happiness that involvement could bring me. For a moment, I wished that I had been as involved in high school as our MYC youth have been, yet I wished I would have pursued involvement due to some forgotten passion, passed on by time or “old age" (I’m only 25). I noticed my young mind intensely focusing on Franz-Diego as he spoke. I turned my body towards him leaning my head forward by the base of my neck thinking, “How does he do it?" This is the same thing I would have done as I observed those involved in my own high school years ago.
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The pizza was a distraction, not from our development of the program, but my jealous attention to the wonderful things our MYC youth have accomplished and for what reasons. Time moved quickly (meaning I forgot about the other things I had to do that night) and the flavor of melted cheese, pepperoni, and tomato sauce was diverting my attention from “jealous discomfort and the task at hand” to “oral delight and the task at hand.” After we had consumed the pizza(s) in a barbaric way, I was able to focus solely on the task at hand. What was important to me was assisting our youth in the development of their plan, not the resurfacing memories of seeing myself as a “big dork" in high school, even if it was food that helped me to refocus on why I was with our MYC youth.
What I learned about myself during the process of outlining a program by youth for youth was that I, as a guide, was seen by our MYC youth as an ally and a person who had a natural ability to summarize (paraphrase and identify with) their thoughts and turn those thoughts and ideas into workable solutions. As they spoke, I often noticed them looking directly to me, at me, which gave me reason to believe that my input was important to them. They also encouraged the constructive disposition of my guidance by often phrasing their thoughts by paralleling them with my own (i.e. “As Nate said," or “I like Nate’s idea, lets roll in that direction"). I stayed unobtrusive to their program development and never told them what to do or how to do it. I simply did my best to round up their thoughts and ideas, squish them together, and offer them as a taste treat. What I came to realize was that my days as a want-to-be leader partly molded me into who I am today. I have abilities that may have served a purpose during high school; I may have thought I had nothing to give when I was giving all along. I also discovered that I have the ability to grow as a respectable youth worker; and I only question my ability as a youth worker because – well hell – youth work is scary!
Young people are their own experts in themselves, yet I was also able to learn a bit about what it means to be a young person today, in their world(s). Because of the mystical part of involvement for young people that Amelia highlighted, I came to further consider the idea that young people today, on one level, have anxieties over involvement just as I did when their age. Even for folks as ambitious as I, it may take a bit of coaxing to become involved, a leader, or a change-agent. Our MYC youth recognized this as well and decided that they would invite young people around them to become engaged in the shaping of our world.
What does this teach me about being a young person in our society? Well, when you are attentive to the position you are in as a young person, like our MYC have demonstrated, it must be very frustrating, oppressive, or even reason to risk trusting relationships with adults. As Jody told us, the general societal view is that youth are powerless. If this view or attitude is true of many adults, it perpetuates the formation of walls which our youth are either forced to climb, want to climb, fail to climb, or fail to see. This within itself is denying access to young people and ignoring the fact that they are citizens, just like adults, living in a democratic society that prides itself on the equality based construction, or reconstruction, of our world.
As for the everydayness, the being-in-the-world part of youthhood, it must feel like walking around as if you are a ghost “unseen, unheard, and above all transparent, if the adults you confide in snub off young peoples' thoughts or ideas of how our world should or could look. Additionally, we may be seeing a rise in youth consciousness of societal issues which we collectively face as a nation; it is a cultural piece. Our young people now belong to a culture that virtually has access to any information via the internet and they are beginning to be asked difficult questions in their schools and communities by the adults who are coming to understand the meaning of guidance and are aware of the oppositions youth face.
What does this teach me about me as I enter the “adult world?" I must be extremely mindful of the ways in which I could abuse power and realize that thinking of our young people as a “culture," is also an important piece to the multicultural journey. I must move beyond the racial boxes, the class boxes, and the gender boxes, and without forgetting the importance of those very real pieces, I must include “youth" as a collective group of humans to protect, to be heard, and influential members of our communities. I can either attempt to break down the walls myself or invite young people to do it with me; I’d rather have young people by my side because if I choose not to, I would most likely fail to notice the walls that stand in their way.
After parting with our MYC youth at “The Friendship House" on Friday, October 11th, I felt the need to tell my peers and friends what had been accomplished in the short two and a half hours we met. I was excited to revisit what I often forgot, which is that young people are important allies in my individual multicultural journey. The pluralistic hopes I have for the world can be further achieved with young people rather than doing it alone and leaving them to sit on the sidelines and watch us “adults" push for change. Only three MYC youth were present that particular afternoon but the MYC, in its entirety, holds many more members, all powerful change-agents who have the potential to begin a chain reaction within our society. What they have they will bring to their schools, to their social engagements, to their homes, and to their communities and they will light a spark under anyone who gives them a moment to be heard. As former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela once said, “Young people are capable, when aroused, of bringing down the towers of oppression and raising the banners of freedom" and he knew – because he started early.
