Senator Jerry Hill talks to conference attendees.
Youth Commission Program Organizer Brook Costello says,”[The event] is a place for teens to have a voice, to speak up and say, ‘I am special; This is what I’m doing. Come join me or start something like this yourself.’”
At the event, the San Mateo Youth Commission hoped to provide a medium for youth leaders to have a voice through a series of presentations. The teens’ exhibitions ranged from volunteering and anti-bullying presentations to a kung fu demonstration.
This year’s conference slogan was “Embracing who you are and celebrating how that unites us all.”
“A lot of the time you experience isolation when you find something you’re good at but we’re trying to show that you can be part of the community and still be unique,” Costello says. “One of our presentations was on cosplay design and clearly that’s something that if I’m at a school with no one else that plays cosplay, then I’m not going to have a community there, but I’m sure there’s other teens elsewhere that I can be united with and this [conference] allows that to happen.”
Aragon freshman Katelyn Wong, who attended the cosplay presentation at the conference, says, “It shows that you can create new stuff and it doesn’t have to be like everyone else. You can use your own ideas to be unique.”
Costello says, “The event was targeted to youth and because of this, all the presentations were led by young people for young people.”
San Mateo High School Interactive Coding Club Founders Anna Zheng and Katherine Arackaparambil presented about girls in computer science at the event. Zheng says, “We were interested in the [Youth Conference] because our club encourages girls who code, and we wanted to take that to another level and share our passion for coding with others.”
Arackaparambil adds, “We discussed stereotypes about coding and gave the audience a general idea of the programming language basics. We talked about ways to get involved in coding and computer science like summer internships and programs.”
However, the conference was not just for high schoolers. Presentations like “Intro to High School” were geared towards middle schoolers. Youth Commission Member and Jefferson High School student Amirah Tulloch adds, “I think the Intro to High School helped incoming freshmen learn the ropes of what goes on. It showed [them] how to maintain [their] own personal identities while still thriving in a high school setting, addressing not just academic but social life.”
The organization behind the event, the San Mateo Youth Commission, is a non-profit group consisting of 25 teams run by San Mateo County teens.
Costello says, “The teams split up into five committees specializing in different areas such as policy recommendations, environmental protection and teen health and happiness. The Youth Commission committees work year-round to advise the Board of Supervisors on issues pertaining to youth.”
The San Mateo Youth Commission used various approaches to inform local teens about the conference. Costello says, “We mostly advertised for this event through word of mouth. We told the office of education and they spread the word to the superintendents of schools. We also created a Facebook page because we know that technology is a big part of teens’ lives. The youth here basically run the meetings, so they did a majority of the planning.”
Tulloch says, “A big part of the process was finding donors to sponsor the event. The conference was completely free for everyone who signed up and we provided lunch for everyone. I think that in the end all our efforts paid off. 50 people attended and that is impressive, especially because it rained on the day of the event.”
The keynote speaker of this year’s conference was Yasmine Davis, a junior at Notre Dame High School in Belmont. She runs a non-profit organization “Make a Birthday Wish” which organizes parties for homeless and low-income children. She co-founded the organization in 2010 and it has helped over 500 children since then.
Costello says, “After the keynote speaker’s speech, attendees had the opportunity to watch the other presentations, and this was followed by a legislative panel.”
On the panel, supervisor Jerry Hill and several assembly members discussed youth issues such as college tuition increases and environmental changes. They also emphasized the importance of youth community involvement and their goals of building more active citizenship with increased voting.
Costello says, “Many adults have this view of teens that they’re hooligans and can’t do anything. But this [conference] was an opportunity for adults to see that, wow, teens can really make an impact.”
This is great that there are such conferences for children!