Investing in and learning from today’s youth is a key to future community change. That was the overall theme of a presentation given Thursday by Beth Malcom, President & CEO of the Kentucky YMCA Youth Association, during a virtual Owensboro Rotary meeting.
“We believe that youth are the changemakers our community needs,” Malcom said. “Personally, I think they are not our leaders of tomorrow. They’re our leaders of today. They’re incredibly innovative.”
Malcom said she believes there is a “superpower of youth” that gets overlooked, and communities often miss out on growth and positive change because of it.
One advantage of younger minds, she said, is they aren’t stuck in the mindset of continuing to do things a certain way. She said creativity is often thriving in the minds of children aged 6-18, so communities need to find ways to allow youth to be engaged rather than sitting back and waiting their turn.
So, the mission of the Kentucky YMCA Youth Association is to “develop engaged citizens and servant leaders, inspired to affect change in their school, community, Commonwealth, nation, and world. Through experiential learning, service, and community activism, the Kentucky YMCA Youth Association fosters critical thinking, leadership, and social responsibility in teens.”
That largely comes in the form of unique programs for civic engagement, such as their Kentucky Youth Assembly Model state legislature and model youth government.
“That’s basically teaching them the basics of state government and how policy works,” Malcom said. “They write their own legislation, we got the Capitol, and they’re able to take away that barrier of just not understanding how to get engaged so that hopefully when they hear things about bills going through or they have an issue in the community they want to address, they understand the process through which laws are made and maybe how they can advocate for those.”
Malcom also noted that adults need to do a better job of setting the right example for the younger generation.
“Unfortunately, we as adults haven’t been the best role models for the last couple of years,” she said. “It’s really come to show with social media and cameras being everywhere. We’re asking them to watch us and trust us, and in the meantime we’re not sticking to our guns or living up to our expectations. They’re watching chaos everywhere.”
Malcom said it’s important for adults to prove they are interested in working with the young people of the community and find ways to get students more involved.
“Each one of us is responsible to ensure that our youth are ready to step up — not behind us and not in front of us, but alongside us,” she said. “And not tomorrow — today.”
