The future of youth involvement in local government is in youth advocacy, according to Arsalan Siddiqui, a member of the Greenbelt Youth Advisory Committee. He recently attended the National League of Cities Conference in Los Angeles, along with members of the Greenbelt City Council. Siddiqui reported to council, at its November 26 regular meeting, that nearly 200 youth from across the United States attended the event, and these budding young leaders had opportunities to interact with city officials and attend information sessions. Some actually led sessions including Siddiqui himself, who presented the topic of youth advocacy to a group of conference attendees. For several months leading up to the event, Siddiqui prepared not only for the session he led but also to be an informed participant at the conference.
He reported to council that while community services for youth are important, and that the service provision model is still useful for young people in communities, the new trend in how cities provide services to young people is advocacy. Youth advocacy is a process by which community officials such as principals, teachers and social workers are directly engaged to support a process of long-term change. Siddiqui was directly involved in the process that led to Greenbelt lowering the voting age to 16 and in the recent voter registration drive at Eleanor Roosevelt High School (at which 40 students registered to vote), and he used both of these as examples of effecting long-term change for youth involvement in community governance that began by engaging city and school officials. Other examples of areas that could benefit from youth advocacy include transportation and empowerment.
Siddiqui reported that he explored strategies to effectively advocate for youth issues with other conference attendees and learned how other cities’ youth advisory committee equivalents help youth. He said that he was the only youth attendee from Maryland, and one of the few from an east coast state. Siddiqui said that simply attending the event inspired him to continue his advocacy work in Greenbelt. He commented that a bottom-line issue for him is his hope that he and his peers will inherit a better world, a great place. To help insure that, he said, it behooves young people to get involved and act now.