GONZALES — Two youth from Gonzales recently participated in a virtual workshop examining the relationship between civic engagement, population health, youth participation and health equity in the United States.
Current Gonzales Youth Commissioner Aiden Cervantes and prior Youth Commissioner Isabel Mendoza attended the two-day workshop called, “Civic Engagement and Civic Infrastructure to Advance Health Equity,” on June 14-15.
The virtual workshop was hosted by the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and explored the factors needed to build and preserve a healthy democracy.
Gonzales Youth Council had its first commissioners serve in 2014 with the intent of providing a youth advisory voice for both the City of Gonzales and the Gonzales Unified School District.
Cervantes and Mendoza discussed their time on the commission and what it had been like to work toward improving their community.
One of the topics discussed by the Gonzales duo was the Youth Council’s ability to look into the state of mental health among youth and work toward the solution of tripling counselor availability within the city.
“In the beginning with the pandemic, we realized it was really hard for us and we wondered about everybody else,” Mendoza said.
The Youth Council created a survey for middle and high school youth, analyzed the data in collaboration with California State University Monterey Bay, then called for more social workers.
“In the beginning, we only had one social worker for our entire district of three schools, and we thought that just isn’t enough, especially during this rough time,” Mendoza said. “We have two new social workers.”
“The project impacted students, parents and community,” Cervantes added. “Mental health is not really something spoken about within our community. Even parents don’t talk about mental health with their kids. We’re literally just teenagers.”
Cervantes said the project inspired other youth in the city.
“One of our main goals was showing students they weren’t the only ones feeling this way,” he said. “Even though we’re a small community, a large portion of students was feeling alone and scared.”
Cervantes noted the current progress is slow, but the Youth Council members will continue working toward their goals, which he believes they will achieve within a few years.
“After this whole presentation, we’ve seen a lot of changes within our school district, not just the high school but the middle school and elementary school,” he said.
The Youth Council will continue to review data and build upon the project to ensure students continue to get the resources they need, Mendoza explained.
They also discussed this school year’s project to get Youth Council members into first-grade classrooms. This not only helped the first graders with extra supervision in the virtual classrooms, but also gave the members a spark of energy after suffering from Zoom fatigue.
“Just seeing them light up talking about their experiences in the first-grade classes, it was a win for us,” Cervantes said.
The Youth Council has faced numerous challenges during its first few years, with both Cervantes and Mendoza having shared experiences in lack of communication with adult authority figures.
“Sometimes people taking a month to respond to emails,” Cervantes said. “Some people who would cancel on a Zoom meeting at the last minute. It was really difficult being online this year and trying to communicate with everyone.”
Mendoza echoed the trouble of fitting meetings into busy schedules.
Recruitment for the 2021-22 Youth Council is starting soon, the City of Gonzales announced. For more information, email gy*@ci.us or visit the Gonzales Youth Council website.
