Second Teen Town hall Meeting Dives Deeper into current issues Facing the Youth in Wilmington

February 19, 2020

Teens and representatives from community organizations met at the Wilmington Library for the second Teen Town Hall meeting, which was organized by Network Connect.

Network Connect is an organization that is passionate about serving the youth and builds collaborative partnerships that are innovative, creative, that benefits the youth.

The teens discussed issues surrounding mental health, gun violence, poverty, and drug abuse. They went over the solutions from the previous meeting and proceeded to go more in-depth with more solutions.

Justis Stewart, a teen facilitator at Network Connect, said that this teen town hall meeting provided more solutions for the teens who may be facing serious issues in the community.

“I’m excited to change the stigma. Our effects on PTSD and how we can implement our ideas,” said Stewart.

Stewart said the teens want the adults to know that the issues they talked about that night are real and they affect the teens.

“They need to acknowledge our issues and they need to not let just their teens try to do things, but actually putting in action themselves,” said Stewart.

She said the teens should also give notice to adults and city officials when they have town hall meetings via email and in person.

Jeanice Morgan, another teen facilitator of Network Connect, said that she heard interesting information at the event, but she wished more teens came. “For a teen to come out here, they have to want to come out here. The teens should promote it towards them. Teens listen to teens. One teen does something, they all want to do it,” said Morgan.

Teens and community leaders talk about issues teens are facing during the Second Teen Townhall event Tuesday, February 11, 2020, at the Wilmington Library in Wilmington, DE. Photo by Monique Harmon

Morgan said she was in the groups that discussed gun violence and poverty and recalled the top solution she heard that night. “The top thing I heard was community centers. They need to work on community centers. They need to [build] it for everybody and not just one person,” she said. Various adults in the community talked about what they learned from the teens that night.

Solaala Desnmi, a chapter president of Junior Chamber International, said he attended the teen meeting after Councilwoman Rysheema Dixon told him about it.

“As a member of the JCI’s, our goal is to help young people figure out what they want to do in life and help them achieve their goals. It’s a great program. I see that they want to take ownership of their community and their environment and make positive changes where they find themselves,” said Desnmi.

Desnmi believes that if teens want to change their community, it starts with them. He added that the adults in the community have responsibilities too. “It’s our responsibility as youth organizers to support them with whatever they want to do and help drive that change that they’re looking for within the community,” said Desnmi.

Councilwoman Dixon said that the town hall meeting was a good initial conversation about drug abuse and mental health issues where the teens came up with more solutions about how to get more teens involved in the conversation. She said that the teens said they didn’t know many organizations that cater to teens that deal with drug abuse. One of the primary issues discussed was the lack of communication on solutions for both topics.

Councilwoman Rysheema Dixon engages in conversations with some teens in the community during the Second Teen Townhall event Tuesday, February 11, 2020, at the Wilmington Library in Wilmington, DE. Photo by Monique Harmon

 

“It was interesting that even when we started asking questions, some of the teens even were honest by saying ‘I don’t talk to anybody about my issues.’ There is a stigma that is still around in mental health and people don’t feel like they have anybody to count on, can talk to, that feels like they’re not going to tell them something other than ‘I understand’ or ‘It’s going to be okay.’ A lot of times they’re saying that’s not what they want to hear. 

How do we find those individuals so we can help them with getting their word out about how they feel? They thought it would be a great idea to have mental health therapists in all schools. It will at least starts the conversation around how we really start to wrap our arms around teens, around these topics,” said Councilwoman Dixon.

Dixon also said that the next step should be to have policymakers organize a teen town hall meeting and have the teens run the meeting so that their voices are heard and so they can engage with them. Cierra Hall-Hipkins, Co-founder of Network Connect, said that the organization will start a partnership with the JCI’s so that the kids can take the solutions and feedback from the meeting to turn them into projects and initiatives.

“Townhall one, they came together and they had a very similar structure where they asked questions to the groups about the same issues and they took that feedback from those people and created solution-based questions [for this meeting]. Some of the things they heard for mental health were peer-to-peer advocates and increasing mental health awareness in the African American community among teens. So they asked questions [at the second meeting] about ‘How do we do those things? What are the steps? What organizations are already doing those things and how do we partner with them to make sure that kids our age know,” said Hall-Hipkins.

Hall-Hipkins said one of the teens mentioned the Community Education Building from a conversation he was in and he didn’t know that the building existed before that conversation. It made her wonder how much information she isn’t delivering to them in the way that she should.

The groups finished the night by coming together in one big circle to discuss the solutions they came up with that night and Hall-Hipkins asked everyone to think of ways to get more teens, community organizations, and city officials to participate in further discussions about the teens and the issues they are facing.