Three Falcons set to change London

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Is there a problem getting youth engaged in politics? Matt Ross, a Coordinator for the London Youth Advisory Council (LYAC), thinks people make it harder than it has to be.

“I think it's done wrong,” he said. “Most youth voting campaigns (and) youth engagement civic campaigns begin with the presupposition that youth don't care. It's always, ‘How can you trick someone into thinking voting's cool?'”

Ross, along with Samantha Fox and Rob Freele, two other LYAC Coordinators; Mark Goad, Internal Affairs Coordinator; and Richard Sookraj and Saquib Mian, External Affairs Coordinators, have been hard at work over the last eight months, attending between 50 and 100 meetings to put the Youth Council together. “This doesn't include the dozens and dozens of Londoners and students who kept me moving forward with inspiration, new ideas and connections,” added Ross.

The product of these months of hard work is the LYAC, a committee of 13 people between the ages of 15 and 25 who are all passionate about making London a better place. They were voted in to the Council by the public in early March, and their term will last from this September until June next year. “Youth Council, in a sense, is very boring,” laughed Ross.

“You're making policy recommendations, you're interfacing with city staff on budget analysis, that kind of thing, but (the members are) legitimately doing something and they have the ability to influence the decisions. I feel like when you actually just offer that, when it is the ability to create something and influence something, all these people rise to it and lots of people become interested in it.”

Three LYAC members — Derek Stevens, Jessica Conlon and Rebecca Croden — have direct ties to Fanshawe.

“I've always wanted to make a difference and try to help uplift and improve everyone's lives,” explained Stevens, a London native who is currently in his second year of the joint Media, Information and Technoculture program between Fanshawe and Western. “I feel like there's a huge burden and negative energy and negativity within our society and that, at the root, we have a problem that hasn't been solved yet.”

“I feel like I am part of that change,” he continued. “I saw (joining the LYAC) as an opportunity to get one step closer to sharing some good ideas to joining up with other like-minded individuals and working together to help improve the state of things.” He was elected based on a platform of sustainability and environmentalism, removing fluoride from London's drinking water and getting people to eat healthy and get active.

Stevens said now is the time to take action and make drastic changes to avoid big problems in the future. “Corporations are backing our governments, which are controlling the decisions we make,” he explained, adding that he sees an extreme divide between corporations and the working class. “We're all human, you have to care. How do we get them to care? is one of my questions … If we don't care for each other, then literally we're (in) an every-man-forhimself survivor (situation) and that means, essentially, at most one person wins and likely everyone loses.”

Conlon, who is in her first year of Practical Nursing at Fanshawe and is a Student Administrative Council Representative for Health Sciences, is from Elmira, Ontario, and has a number of ideas about how to make London a better place. “I've been involved with a lot of grassroots movements, so I really understand how to do that. Being in Practical Nursing, I understand what health promotion is about. It's getting to the cause and stopping it from happening. It's prevention — preventing it before it actually goes on.”

She added that she wants to fix London's problems at their source. “I've gone to a lot of City Hall meetings, heard about the issues and seen how they dealt with things and the speed of their process when dealing with issues.” She said she has seen firsthand how the city council does not always put citizens' needs and wants first, citing current issues like the debate to move City Hall, cutting money from social programs and the proposed light show for the World Figure Skating Championships slated to cost $450,000.

Conlon had a number of ideas about how to improve the city, such as creating community greenhouses to teach people about local agriculture and healthy eating, and creating safe drinking water for the London population. “Our water treatment facility is so old,” she said. “It needs to be refurbished, it needs to be fixed, it's not where it needs to be … We need to get the chemicals out of our water.”

Overall, through initiatives like the North East Community Market (nemarket.ca) and L.O.O.K. (Locally Organized Organic Knowledge) It's A Party (lookitsaparty. ca), Conlon said she hopes to turn London into a thriving cultural hub. “That's why I wanted to get into City Hall and make them see that and make them as passionate about it as we are. If they were passionate about it, I think it would be happening already. For some reason, there's too much apathy in there. We want to try to get some empathetic people who really want things to happen in there.”

Croden graduated from Fanshawe's Recreation and Leisure Services program in April 2011. She grew up in Muskoka, Ontario and has lived in London for three years. “(I ran for LYAC) because I'm already an activist, so I figured I may as well put my activism to the test and bring it to another level,” she said. Croden's platform was based on creating green spaces in London through rooftop gardening, greenhouses and other sustainability measures, as well as ensuring safe, fluoridefree drinking water.

Croden and Conlon both mentioned that, though their duties as Youth Council members don't officially begin until September, they have already started putting together an action plan to create greenhouses in London over the summer. Conlon mentioned she had been talking to business and economy students: “We can actually start proving that this is going to benefit us and we can actually give them logistics, numbers, scales, yield amounts per square footage.” She said she wants to focus on giving people access to fresh, local produce. “We will be able to have more than one growing season, and it will help our infrastructure greatly. We could have social programs — have people who are in mental health facilities or are homeless come in and learn about gardening and learn about science … The city has so much potential.”

“Every single one of (the council members on the LYAC) is honestly equally passionate (as Stevens, Conlon and Croden). It's unbelievable,” Ross said proudly. “I think they're going to be amazing: a) they're all passionate, and b) it's a broad political spectrum. They'll argue, but I think that's a very good thing, they'll come to very creative conclusions just by that tension. Despite the fact they have different opinions … they're all collaborating and working on issues already. It's fascinating to see it happen.”

For more information about the London Youth Advisory Council, check out lyac.ca.