Students Strive for Solutions
By Taylor Evans
Youth Summit Focuses on the Opioid Crisis
The Schuylkill County Youth Summit is an organization of students that strive to solve local issues that affect the community as a whole. Six students from each county school district are chosen based on their character, work ethic and problem-solving skills.
The following students from Mahanoy Area Jr./Sr. High School were selected this year: Colin Fegley, Madison Cavenas, Megan Bisco, Justin Letcavage, Emily Lawrence, and Danny Lawrence.
Making Progress
“The benefits of the Youth Summit are being able to interact with different school districts from the county and bounce around ideas to come up with ways to solve community problems,” says Cavenas. “We are making great progress as everyone is deeply involved and motivated to work together and create a better place.”
There is a student executive committee that meets several times a month to discuss issues, however, the actual summit was planned to have about 100 students gathered at Penn State Schuylkill on March 23. The topic of the summit was the opioid crisis, which was selected by the students.
In order for the students to be educated on the crisis, community speakers came to the meetings to discuss in further detail. To spread awareness, participating students do many activities that are informative and fun.
One of the activities that the students worked together on to solve this substantial problem was to make slogans on how to advertise the danger of drugs. The slogan chosen will later be used in an informational video featuring the students to help fight the opioid crisis.
Raising Awareness
The video will be spread across social media platforms, which will further bring attention to this problem in our community.
All of these efforts help to raise awareness about the opioid crisis, which is affecting so many local people.
The Youth Summit’s overall main goal is to solve problems in our community so that it is a place where everyone can remain and feel safe.
Above photo by Taylor Evans of Mahanoy Area students Madison Cavenas and Colin Fegley, who participated in the 2018 Schuylkill County Youth Summit.