By Andrea Davidson, North Shore Young Citizens’ Forum Participant, 2020
“Education should not be the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” — William Butler Yeats
“No one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts off from its youth severs its lifeline.” — Kofi Annan
Every municipal election, newspaper editorials complain about the low voter turnout among young adults. How can this be a surprise if we have never been educated about the value, importance and basic governing structures of municipalities?
The North Shore Young Citizens’ Forum (the “Forum”) was created to address that discrepancy. After completing this year’s forum, I feel empowered with the knowledge, confidence and tools I need to be proactive civic leader on the north shore.
Before I share more about what I’ve learnt during the Forum, I want to tell you a little bit about me and why I applied to participate in the Forum.
Who am I?
I am an uninvited, white colonial settler with western European roots. I’m a member of a multi-cultural family and a person with invisible disabilities who lives, learns and works on the traditional, ancestral, and occupied territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, including those of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), shíshálh (Sechelt), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
The intergenerational trauma and displacement experienced by Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island is ongoing: it’s the result of colonial, genocidal policies such as the Indian Act that are still in force today. Every Canadian is responsible for taking action to implement the Truth and Reconciliation’s Calls to Action and the Calls to Justice outlined in the final report released by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
I acknowledge the innumerable privileges that I have been afforded due to my race and class (among other things) and I am actively trying to become a better ally to individuals and communities fighting oppression. I know that I will fail along the way but I am deeply dedicated to decolonizing our society and I’m ready to learn and grow from my mistakes.
And finally, I am a librarian, non-practising lawyer and a loyal friend who is passionate about movies, podcasts and crossword puzzles.
Why did I apply to participate in the Forum?
My circumstances were a little unusual. I am a recent transplant to the District of North Vancouver. I moved to the North Shore during the summer of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic. Some of the traditional ways of getting to know a new community were off-limits due to restrictions put in place due to COVID-19: no meeting strangers at a coffee shop and sparking up a conversation; no exploring local restaurants; or attending in-person educational or recreational programming offered by local libraries or community centres.
I’ve always had a passion for politics and social justice. As a kid I used to call in with questions for political panels assembled on CBC Newsworld. When I was in law school, I participated in University model parliaments, which for those of you who aren’t familiar, are federal parliamentary session simulations led by students and held in the BC Legislative Assembly. They give students that chance to practice debating in question period, work collaboratively on government committees, and be engaged in the political process.
Then, like many of my fellow cohorts in the Forum, life happened. And before I knew it, ten years had passed since my involvement with model parliaments and I was busy working hard to build a career as a librarian and a life with a partner I love.
The Forum presented me with an excellent opportunity to get to know my new community; meet other engaged, action-oriented young adults; and learn more about how municipalities work and how I could help affect positive change on a local level where it matters most.
What did I learn in the forum?
I learnt about the major strategic documents that govern municipal action including Official Community Plans (“OCP”). An OCP is a long-term planning document that municipalities use to guide future development and growth. The span of OCP’s are long, 20-30 years, so they lay out the big picture: the values, principles and goals that will drive new municipal projects on housing or infrastructure. OCP’s are also living documents and they are reviewed regularly by city councillors and staff to ensure that they’re continuing to meet the diverse needs of all community members. The three north shore municipalities were kind enough to allow their planning staff to come to the Forum and share the latest work they’re pursuing around community development and engagement. Meeting and interacting with city planning staff was central to demystifying municipal matters: urban planning is no longer an abstract concept when you’re speaking with individuals who genuinely want to learn about your lived experience as a young adult.
I also learnt about new, potential public transit options such as micro, on-demand shared ride services. We heard about a demand-responsive transit pilot that Translink ran on Bowen island; that it was hugely successfully and then promptly shelved. I was really excited to hear about this option because it could make using public transit a realistic option for some young people who lives with disabilities and then really disappointed to hear that despite being a success, no municipality was going forward with a similar pilot. These are the kinds of creative, responsive and resilient initiatives that youth need to champion to city councils and mayors. And I would never have heard about this transportation innovation without the Forum.
From the facilitators, I learnt how to model inclusive and accessible leadership. At the beginning of the Forum, one of the facilitators shared a “diversity welcome.” The diversity welcome helped to build trust and it gave me a glimpse in the very first session, that this Forum was going to be truly inclusive. The diversity welcome acknowledged the very diverse backgrounds and lived experiences of the young people that were able to participate in the Forum and those who were not because of various systemic and racist barriers they face such as Indigenous youth in custody. Parts of the welcome that were really powerful to me were the welcomes to “agender people… those who are estranged from their families or who have complicated and untraditional families…and “survivors of all kind.”
The facilitators also succeeded in creating safe and brave spaces. They did so by regularly checking in with people, seeing how they were doing and reinforcing that self-care comes first and that all emotions are ok, that we all contain multitudes. We can be grieving or be happy or frustrated: all of our emotions were valued and supported.
Through the Forum, I’ve also made connections with other amazing young adults that I hope will be long lasting. These friendships are not only based on a common love of learning and desire for civic engagement but also on the sense of community that the facilitators were able to create in an exclusively virtual space. How did they accomplish this difficult task? They used all the interpersonal and technical tools at their disposal. They took advantage of Zoom features like the annotation and whiteboard features that allowed us to come together as a group online; offered regular debriefing sessions to help us process what we were learning and what we still didn’t understand; and organized fun activities like text waterfalls with some creative prompts that allowed people to share their personalities and foster social connection.
Thanks!
I want to express my deep gratitude and thanks to the funders; organizations, CityHive and the North Shore Community Resources Democracy Café program; and facilitators (Andrea, Rowan, Imrahn, Hassan and Anna) that worked very hard to organize and run the 2020 NSYCF.
It would have been easy to put the Forum on hold given the unprecedented challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead the facilitators pivoted and offered 10 virtual sessions in which participants like myself got to learn about the role municipalities play in affecting change and the opportunities young people have to engage with and influence municipal affairs.
I sincerely hope that the Forum continues again next year in 2021. The voices of young people will be needed more than ever as cities grapple with trying to adapt to and recover from COVID-19 and all of the ripple effects the pandemic has had on how people work, live and play on the North Shore.
