well my name is Frances I’m 17 and hang
on a second can you guys all hear me ok
good that’s really good because in this
day and age for a youth that isn’t
always the case in 1966 the monkeys
recorded the lyrics we just want to be
friendly come watch us sing and play
where the new generation and we have
something to say which tells me that
over the past 50 years youth are still
asking for the same thing they have been
for centuries to be heard a quick
introduction of myself and just to let
you know all the slides you see behind
me today are done by youth aged 5 and up
the current one being a portrait of
myself as drawn by my sister I am mostly
and I’m mostly involved with three
organizations the help project miss bc
and ASAP a parent’s group at my school
but throughout the year I often like to
attend other community meetings to you
know network and experience and bring
home fresh ideas I am the current Miss
Teen Fraser Valley chose based on
community involvement I attend a small
alternate school in a community that’s
almost as small and I’m involved in it
as much as possible I enjoy helping it
at the local elementary school and I
spent all of October raising money for
the Cinderella Project by volunteering
at a haunted house which somehow managed
to be less scary than standing up here
right now is and I am incredibly
impatiently waiting for the day I am
allowed to have a say in my community as
a youth myself and based on the many
conversations I have with my peers I can
tell you that we often feel like we’re
screaming at the top of our lungs and
still we’re not being heard after all
what good could we have to say what
opinions do we have when we spend all
our time drinking doing drugs listening
to music with a heavy bass line and even
heavier content except that’s not me
except that’s not my friends except that
is in fact on minority there are far
more of us working out in our community
every day through things like cleaning
up the coastline volunteering in seniors
homes in elementary schools collecting
food donations and below 0 weather and
maybe planning world domination and yes
I’ve done most of these viewed our
everywhere they’re just biting at the
bit to evoke change and yet still we
don’t seem to be taken seriously
and why shouldn’t we be heard when it
comes to things like community meetings
where we’re deciding on new housing
developments when we’re the ones who are
inheriting this future we’re the ones
who will be there when the trees are
gone and the houses are built help us
make this decision today so we can take
ownership of it because we’ll be the
ones feeling the ecological and
economical effects of it far into our
future we are more ecologically educated
than any generation before our own our
textbooks are constantly changing and
updating perhaps we’ve learned something
that just wasn’t there for you to learn
before i do see hope though and it comes
admittedly slowly a bit too slowly for
the fast-paced brains of youth but it’s
coming i am currently waiting to stand
on the board of the help project which
is an organization dedicated to
connecting youth in mental health and
family crisis to resources and I say
Stan not sit purposely because no one
gets anything done sitting these days I
am currently on the youth council since
March 2016 with my peers providing
insight into what we the youth want in
need and recently I was contacted by one
of their members saying they had been
sort of throwing around the idea of
putting me into a director’s position
and of course I was honored and thrilled
but we found out later I couldn’t do
that and it wasn’t because they didn’t
want me anymore or because I didn’t want
to do it it was because someone who had
never met me far away decided I wasn’t
capable yet we have so much potential
progress coming and yet the outdated
system brings out all to a halt with a
lack of trust in our youth I understand
that we have a lot to learn but most
youth are better educated today hands on
anyways and I’m not asking for all youth
to be given a leadership role like
become a director of a not-for-profit
but I am asking for us to create
legitimate roles in our societies for
them and if you shows they are capable
and willing on a case-by-case basis let
the organization organization that works
with them decide what level of
involvement their roles can be in their
leadership another thing that I think
makes it easy for a youth goat to go
unheard is we have evolutionary science
working against us I have a secret for
you my frontal lobe isn’t quite full
we developed at least the connections
aren’t neither are those of the brains
of most people under 21 this means the
connections are made a little bit slower
social-economic says that fifty two
percent of our population is under 30
this means about fifty percent of us
have a bit of a harder time reaching our
cause and effects part of our brain but
I think that makes us dream bigger
because of it I don’t seem to get so
caught up and how dangerous it can be
for us but because you have learned
about this through technology and while
the internet we’ve learned how to work
with it creating something that could
have been a limitation that isn’t really
a limitation anymore in fact I’d argue
it’s a creative superpower when we have
the time to truly think about something
and then come back down to earth we are
able to first think without limits and
then plan accordingly so I ask of you
what could happen if we teamed up the
adults in the youth I mean I think
something pretty amazing if we brought
together the unlimited dreamer and the
highly honed problem solver when we take
the time to all listen to each other and
I mean really listen we can get on the
same level and will achieve a global
cross generation way of thinking we need
to stop sticking two groups of age and
personality where conversation owes
freely and easily because once we do
that we will be more rounded and
educated people because we’ll learn from
each other coming from an alternate high
school I can tell you that a lot of the
scene there’s a lot of stigma
surrounding being a youth we’re good for
nothing we don’t care about what goes on
in our community all we care about is
our video games I’ve heard it all up
until very recently the commute elders
within my community were genuinely
afraid of us it took years of
painstakingly planned community outreach
from the classes before my own and my
principal and teachers to gain a level
of respect with the seniors and because
of that now we plan events throughout
the year like senior team lunches where
the high school students and the
elementary students serve lunch to the
seniors and love is shared and stories
of life experience are swapped and so
much has come from that trust we’ve
formed now of course I’m not saying all
youth a perfect
and the sigmas are completely untrue for
everybody because no one’s perfect
especially not the adults if they were
certain politicians definitely would not
be in power right now thank you however
we do need to raise the bar on what we
think a youth is capable of because the
more respect we give youth the better
they were performed and it becomes a
two-way street if you give us your
respect we will give it back to you when
the seniors of my community sparked us
in this way we were driven to prove them
right p it through stopping in the
middle of the street to help them with
groceries or holding a door we just
wanted to prove to them that we are
worthy of that respect but when you
continue to label us with these self
enabling Sigma’s we don’t see a reason
to try any harder it’s just easier
sometimes to be bad if you don’t have
faith in our youth how are we supposed
to have faith in ourselves but if you
give us a spark we will be inspired to
listen to you in return and I think a
lot of good things could come from that
teamwork I have sat in on countless
community meetings listening to adults
talk over myself and other youth who
they invited there in the first place
for their opinions these adults seem
like they’re the ones who wanted to
spark us but the second we gather the
courage to speak up and it doesn’t go
with their opinion we’re easily brushed
over and ignored does he leave the youth
feeling rejected and questioning their
own intellect how can you expect our
youth to turning the caring
compassionate respectful adults if we
talked to a lot of youth through local
community conversation and skype calls
all around the world and they all have
at least one story of a time they spoke
up or against something and felt unheard
I wish I had a dollar for every time I
was like hey how’s it goin and then I
got a rant as a response it’s things
like teachers who don’t want to hear a
question they’re asking therapists you
don’t want to understand quite why
they’re feeling a certain way bosses who
don’t want to hear any way
idea because the old ways were perfectly
fine up till now and parents you just
can’t understand why their youth are
acting away they wouldn’t sometimes as a
youth it can feel like when the adults
don’t understand who they don’t want to
take the time to do that I however can
understand a little bit why it’s hard to
trust you in the past it’s fair to say
we didn’t have the best access to
knowledge which meant we got a lot of
our info from newspapers or word of
mouth this led to a biased game of
community telephone where details were
lost in fact and fiction became one safe
to say it did a pretty good job of
taking away from our credibility however
today in our new age we have been raised
in a world where we have access to all
the information we could ever need at
our fingertips I can fact check articles
with a quick stroke few quick strokes of
the keyboard I can scroll through
countless studies while listening to
podcasts like radio lab on unlimited
topics I can further my education far
beyond the previous limits through
youtube channels like scishow and crash
course i can create whole domains out of
nothing there are sixth graders far
younger than me learning coding the same
way my generation learn to speak french
only it’s far more universal and much
there’s a much greater need for it now
we have the information and the
technology giving us access to it we
have the classes teaching us the lead so
let us let us be dreamers without limits
let us fill the roles on societies that
would have otherwise been left empty
because no other person’s better suited
to fill it let us discover what happens
when these gaps in our society become
bridged let us lead let us change the
world and i do believe we’re capable of
changing the world because there are so
many of us with so many amazing ideas
and goals really there’s an army of us
we’re sitting on local action teams on
the weekend and in leadership classes
before the Sun even rises we are
approving our dedication over and over
again and still we are not being heard
and out of all the things I wish to
change in this world
that is the most important to me because
once we have done that our collective
minds will work to make the rest happen
with a fresh young perspective our
inspired youth are pragmatic pertinent
and prevalent and here like me at TEDx
today ready to create noise until we
become heard and in the last couple
seconds I have with you I just like to
tell you a bit about a district forum i
attended recently for a grade where we
helped look at what the new 9 to 12
curriculum might look like they brought
in this wonderful speaker who said
something that truly resonated with me
the past should be a place of reference
not residents so I asked him you today
tell me why are we still residing along
the preconceived ideas of what a youth
is capable of why are we still residing
in a world where our children are seen
and not heard I ask you to step out of
the past and into the future with me and
help me work to make it so that all the
generations after my own can truly be youth out loud