Youth Hunger Summit

To the Editor,

Wow.  That’s the one word that kept coming to mind as I observed young people from our metro community come together on September 16 in the first ever Youth Hunger Summit on the campus of Oak Grove Lutheran School.  Kudos have to go out to the corps of young people who thought of, organized, planned and carried out this great day of service and learning.  Close to 140 young people from fourteen area schools participated in a day of learning about hunger and homelessness, put their heightened awareness to work in going out to area homeless and food serving organizations, and made a commitment to working for positive change in their communities.

We here at Metro Youth Partnership are proud of the role we played in connecting financial resources, support and some mentorship to a passionate, energetic and responsible group of leaders who happen to be young people. They are to be commended for their efforts over the summer.
There is much gratitude and acknowledgements to go around:

• support of the local school systems, their administration and staff, who right away got behind the idea, supporting their student leadership in the planning process and encouraging students to participate - on a school day;

• local businesses who, when young people came around looking for financial support, readily provided food, beverages and other contributions toward the day;

• Financial sponsors of the day: the Fargo Kiwanis and State Bank and Trust;

• Oak Grove, for their continued commitment to building assets in all kids, hosting the event on their beautiful campus;

• the volunteer drivers and the organizations that provided vans and buses to whisk us to and from service sites that day;

• the great and insightful speakers who came to be a part of the learning part of the day, including Don Pearson, Michael Carbone and Greg Tehven, and the many other “big kid” leaders who lent their time and expertise;

• Minnesota Alliance with Youth and State Farm Insurance, who partnered to provide the original spark and the seed grant for the event.
Finally, the biggest commendation goes out to the young people themselves, who wanted to focus their day on hunger and homelessness, to use their day to put their caring into action, who wanted to expand the number of schools and students who could participate, who wanted to use this summit as a proving ground for upcoming, student driven service opportunities like the tremendously powerful Homeless and Hungry event and their ever-more-ambitious, second-annual Fill the Dome food drive. They dreamt it, planned it, and stepped up to see it through. Thank you for your leadership, your fine example and your hard work. You did it.
 
Hey, adults of the metro area – be encouraged and so very proud.  At the end of the day, we were sent forth with big dreams and high hopes, and it will take open-minded and caring adult supporters to push for and be pushed forward by and for our youth. We look forward to partnering in the future.

Barry Nelson
Fargo