For members of the Lake Oswego Youth Leadership Council, the trip to make their voices heard was an hour-long early morning car ride to Salem.
As the co-sponsors of the 2024 Oregon Youth Summit, the Lake Oswego YLC had a full day ahead of them. They’d worked tirelessly with the Happy Valley Youth Council to prepare for the summit and had fellow council members from Eugene, Gresham, West Linn, Oregon City and beyond joining the summit on Friday, Feb. 2 in Salem.
Following the Oregon Youth Summit, the students toured the state Capitol and spoke with Oregon State Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego.
“I was really happy and surprised that everyone who was involved in the youth summit was really active. It wasn’t just having lectures, but talking to others and getting to meet each other,” said Naomi Robinson, a YLC member and sophomore at Lake Oswego High School.
They were joined by Lake Oswego Mayor Joe Buck, who introduced the share-out reports from each council.
“My favorite part of the summit was definitely our share out, where every council had one representative come up and talk about what they were doing that year,” said Allison Korkola, a junior at LOHS. “We had a wide variety of councils, some really new ones and some way older ones. We got to hear from each other and I think it was really impactful.”
The Lake Oswego YLC members shared their work advocating for a statewide flavored tobacco ban, which they previously presented to both the City Council and the Lake Oswego School Board.
After the report outs, the students separated into small group discussions with facilitators from around Oregon. The discussions covered topics such as substance abuse with Northwest Family Services, therapy awareness with Collective Roots, election process/advocacy with the American Cancer Society and social media consumption with Dr. Doreen Dodgen-Magee.
“One topic that surprised me the most was the election and advocacy table. I think a lot of youth didn’t know a lot about that process. I think the facilitators that we had did a great job of introducing that,” said Drishti Singh, a sophomore at Lakeridge High School.
The students added that many of the discussion topics surrounded issues that weren’t discussed frequently enough and they hoped to continue those conversations after the summit.
“The one that really stood out to me was about therapy and stress, also the stigma around therapy in some communities. We had a really powerful discussion on how certain immigrant communities might fear therapy and how it’s not necessarily up to one person, whether or not they acknowledge they need help, but rather their community, and whether or not they’re able to say out loud that they need help,” said Kasen Shi, another YLC member.
The YLC hopes to continue collaborating with other student councils around Oregon and recently heard that the Hillsboro Youth Leadership Council is interested in pursuing their own statewide flavored tobacco ban initiative because of Lake Oswego.
Following the summit, the YLC crossed the street to the Oregon state Capitol building where they met with Wagner to discuss their advocacy for the flavored tobacco ban. In December, the YLC presented a letter for Wagner to the Lake Oswego City Council, which joined in their efforts. A few weeks later, the Lake Oswego School Board signed on to the letter as well.
Wagner answered students’ questions and discussed the possibility of a statewide ban joining the political fray during the 2025 legislative session.
“As Senator Wagner was articulating to us, it’s not as simple as just pushing a bill through a session,” said Liam Aranda-Michel, a junior at Lake Oswego High School.
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