Somerville youths hold talks on change
Brainstorm ideas on solving issues they face daily
SOMERVILLE - On a warm Saturday afternoon, school is the last place you might expect to find Alexis Fitzpatrick, 16. But the Somerville teen dutifully took a seat yesterday in a classroom at Somerville High School.
"I'm here to increase the peace," she said exuberantly.
She wasn't alone - about two dozen young people, between the ages of 13 and 21, filed into room 239 for a workshop on creating change in public policy, led by Manish Lama, 17, a junior at the high school.
For an hour, the teenagers discussed problems they see every day on city streets and in school hallways and brainstormed ideas about how to change them.
"I don't want them to just keep these ideas in here for five, six hours," Lama said. "I want them to take it outside, to share it."
This workshop was one of many held at the school yesterday, part of Uniting the Ville: Real Stories, Real Change, Somerville's second annual Youth Peace Conference hosted by The Center for Teen Empowerment and Mayor Joseph Curtatone. Organizers said about 660 young people attended the conference, designed to give a voice to the city's youth through workshops, performances, and a healing ceremony, confronting in each event their everyday struggles with drugs, violence, and prejudice.
Participants wrote a document, to be delivered to the Mayor's Youth Council, calling for measures including more job opportunities and programs for youth, and for Somerville to adopt the City of Hope resolution, which promotes equality for immigrants.
"The idea is to highlight current and past issues that are pressing concerns for our youth," said Stephanie Berkowitz, director of external affairs for Teen Empowerment. "Our goal is to change beliefs, mindsets, and actions, away from negative behavior toward a positive community."
Last year's request by young people for more summer jobs resulted in money allotted in the city's budget to create more jobs and to appoint a summer youth employment coordinator, Nancy Bacci, said Wendy Weiser, conference director.
"We're looking at violence [as a blanket issue], but we take a really broad approach to that - looking at things that lead down the path to violence," she said - like too many young people on the streets, not enough job and training opportunities and dangerous stereotypes the young people tried to combat through spoken word performances, skits, and songs on stage in the school's auditorium.
Curtatone launched the conference by addressing the packed school auditorium, urging students to help lead the way in creating a sense of hope for themselves and their peers.
"Somerville embraces everyone and anyone, no matter where they come from, as long as they want to contribute," he said. "You need to hold my feet to the fire as an elected official. We're here to listen."
