Maine Youth Share Skills

Maine Youth Share Skills
By Becky Buyers-Basso
Mount Desert Islander
Thursday, November 11, 2004

Bar Harbor - Kids from Kittery to Madawaska and Rumford to Lubec heard advice from the governor and picked up some practical skills at a two-day peer leadership conference held here last week. The mission of the conference was to inspire youth and adults to create positive change in Maine communities.

"Governor Baldacci told us the ball is in our hands," said Jeremy Cline, one of three Mount Desert Island High School students invited to participate in the conference. "He said even if you're from a small town in Maine you can do anything, and to never give up faith, like the Red Sox."

Jeremy and fellow students Sally Swift and Ebony Reed were invited to participate in the conference by guidance counselors. They joined more than 450 youth leaders, in grades seven through 12, came together at the Atlantic Oakes on Nov. 4-5 for the 21st annual Maine Youth Action Network (MYAN) Peer Leadership Conference. MYAN is an initiative if the People's Regional Opportunity Program's (PROP) Youth Resiliency Project and its partner, the Muskie School of Public Service, both based in Southern Maine.

We hold the conference in Bar Harbor because it's central," said PROP staffer Lindsey Bomba. "It's not more than four hours from anywhere else in the state."

Over the two days, students had their choice of 70 workshops on topics ranging from anti-bullying to adolescent health. The conference featured specific workshops on physical activity, nutrition and anti-tobacco advocacy.

VISTA (Volunteers In Service to America) volunteer Genelle Vashro, of Bar Harbor, teamed up with MDI High School student Sally Swift and Mount Desert Island Elementary School students to lead a workshop in putting out a newspaper with the theme, "We Have a Voice." Last year Ms. Vasro secured a grant to fund Youth Press, a bi-monthly newspaper written by and about MDI youth. Writers Stephanie Leonardi, Steve Pierce, Johanna Robinson and Sally Swift led exercises to teach interviewing, composition and headline writing skills. Cartoonist Zoe Reifsnyder shared her drawing skills and a local newspaper editor gave tips on layout.

Jon Barber, a 13-year-old from Greenville, discovered that interviewing someone is not so hard when questions are prepared ahead of time.

At the conclusion of the workshop, which had about 40 participants, many said they would take what they learned back home and investigate starting their own newspapers.

As members of the MDI Greater Coalition for Children and Youth Forum, the MDI students said they were looking forward to applying the skills they learned a the conference to school project and dealing with drug problems.

"We can learn a lot from other schools," observed Ebony Reed.