(Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Dylana Kneeshaw

MAKING YOUTH HEARD

Community leaders delve into mental health, substance use, and vaping issues with SD 73 students

Dec 11, 2019 | 4:38 PM

KAMLOOPS — Students in School District 73 had a chance to meet with representatives today (Dec. 11) from the Kamloops RCMP, SD 73, Kamloops City Council, and mental health programs.

Grade 11 and 12 students who participated in the RCMP Youth Advisory Council event had a lot of questions centered around mental health, substance use, and youth vaping.

One of the organizers of this year’s event is Brock Middle School Vice Principal, Scott Galloway, who says the whole day is based around those three main topics chosen.

“Then we build a panel around people that can help affect change with the issues they identified. So the whole day is around their (students’) voice, and then answering questions around that,” he says. “We’re scaffolding the information they got now (in the first sessions) into the next level of work in the afternoon when they’re going to be building some student-developed solutions for the problems that they have.”

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Community partners who participated in the session heard issues from students, listened to solution suggestions, and cleared up misconceptions around how problems can be solved.

Kamloops RCMP Superintendent Syd Lecky says he took questions from many passionate students, and he’s glad the door was opened to have a real discussion.

“It gets them thinking — realizing what you thought was such a simple thing is far more complex when you start drilling down into the legislation behind things, and complexities of communities and where you live, and how everything has to be considered. So it’s pretty neat.”

The annual event is in its fifth year, and provided a lot of information for students, but also let representatives in charge know what is important to young people.

Students meanwhile, learned it’s often a complicated path to what sounds like an easy solution, and say they’d like to have more communication set up to learn.

“Of course, as you heard today, if the solution was simple, we would have fixed it by now. We being all of us (community partners),” explains Lecky. “(It’s important) to have the discussion in the school and to let them know that we actually do a lot of work collaboratively in and outside the school arena with these other agencies and other groups to make things happen.”

Kellan Breen is a Grade 12 student at NorKam Secondary, and says he’d like to have more information provided to young people.

“I would really like to see a lot of communication with youth come of this because I feel like its really, really lacking in the community. Other than that, more services and resources for youth,” Breen says. “And that goes back to communication — they’re talking about all these policies that they have but we’re never really told about them until now. This is how I find out about these things, which is kind of ridiculous.”

In agreement with idea of further communication opportunities, Madison Doiron, a Grade 12 student at Valleyview Secondary, says she felt a bit inspired from the session.

“I just kind of was wondering how many people actually wanted to see a change in our community. And I think that was eye-opening, to see how many people are actually willing to speak up about youth’s problems,” Doiron notes. “I personally kind of want to try and create a group with the youth and discuss our problems and see everyone’s side of the story.”

After the feedback from the event is gathered up and put together, Galloway says organizers will provide the panelists with the information in the new year.