N.O. youth draft master plan to guide their future
6th July 2020 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
Buoyed by faith in themselves and driven by hope for the future of New Orleans, dozens of local children and youth recently joined in a virtual conference aimed at crafting a vision for young peoples’ place in the surging national effort to obtain social justice and equality.
The result of the online summit, which was titled “Flip the Script,” was a draft of the city’s first-ever Youth Master Plan. The event was sponsored by the New Orleans Children and Youth Planning Board, which was created under local ordinance and state law to craft a 10-year master plan that will guide young people and their supporters over the next decade in creating a New Orleans focused on youth development and young people’s role in a brighter day ahead for the city.
CYPB Executive Director Karen Evans said last weekend’s online conference represented something wholly unique in New Orleans, which she said had never seen such a gathering of the city’s youth who were all focused on mapping their own futures.
“Young people never had that opportunity before, where they could come together and talk, youth to youth,” Evans said.
She said attendees at the June 27 online forum jumped at the chance to examine “how they’re viewed in the city.”
“They kind of spurred each other on, to become more hopeful about the future,” she said. “They learned that they do matter.”
CYPB Youth Advisory Board member and Benjamin Franklin High School rising senior John Davillier said the gathering stressed a united vision and purpose for local young people. “The main benefit was how all these young people came together, and with all their different opinions helped us to build a plan for our future,” said 17-year-old Davillier.
In addition to the CYPB, the Youth Master Plan effort is facilitated by the New Orleans Youth Alliance and the Mayor’s Office of Youth and Families. The June 27 virtual gathering was co-created by the CYPB’s Youth Advisory Board.
The recent virtual conference included vibrant discussions and brainstorming about the current state of affairs in the country, including the deaths of Black citizens at the hands of law enforcement officers, and the nation- and world-wide protests that have emerged around racial and societal fairness, equality and justice.
Also a prime topic of conversation was the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the ways it has affected the American social, political and economic landscape.
The conference featured panel discussions and the creation of thoughts and ideas among several groups of attendees. Each group’s thoughts were then brought together to be mulled and discussed by the whole conference. What came forth was nothing less than an outline for the future of the city’s youth.
The virtual gathering included several guest speakers, including Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who urged participants to use this extremely trying time in our country’s history to speak the stories of young people so they can impact issues such as systemic racism, freedom of expression and social justice.
“I want you to be encouraged, because this time and this moment causes us to reflect on some of the bad things we’ve been doing collectively, where there are policies that have impacted people disproportionately, whether racism that is very systemic, into institutions and organizations and even into some of our homes,” Cantrell told the attendees via video. “This is our time, and your time to embrace all of those challenges, and all of those issues knowing that you have a place and a role to play in charting a better future, and a brighter future, not just for yourself, even for adults in our community, but for the children who will follow in your footsteps.”
According to the master plan drafted from the June 27 call, the document represents “a Vision/Narrative to inspire and move towards a hopeful future.” Underscoring that motto, the young participants determined that people’s beliefs (or what they say) plus values (what they invest in) form their integrity, or how closely those beliefs and values align. The plan also included a clear vision for the future and young people’s roles in it.
“New Orleans is a city where the full self-expression, leadership, creativity and culture of all children and youth comes together to create a true community where everyone succeeds,” reads the vision statement.
The document then lists six ideas that emerge from the stated vision, including that every youth is a valued part of New Orleans, regardless of their personal demographics and background; that children and young people have their own challenges they face, ones that contribute to the city’s overall uniqueness; that youth can define their own story, one that reflects young people’s impact on the city; that children and youth are capable of defining their own futures and can rise above their situations; and that “New Orleans children and youth represent a unified, diverse, socially conscious, active, passionate, intelligent, resilient group of leaders.”
The sixth part of the master plan is perhaps the most far-reaching and future-focused: “We recognize as a city, that each generation has its movement that is advanced by youth leaders and this generation sets the stage for the next one to come.”
Now that the Flip the Script summit produced a draft master plan, it will be digested, evaluated and modified as needed and as participants’ thoughts continue to come forth.
“We want to ask, ‘Does this master plan reflect everything that was said?’” Evans stated.
She said the youth at the gathering generated a bounty of thoughts about their future and the development of the city – so many, in fact, that a number of them were saved for further planning efforts.
“We feel strongly that they left so many great ideas wide open,” Evans said.
This article originally published in the July 6, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
