U’s teen summit leads local youth to higher ground

BY DENNIS GEISINGER

Spoken word artist Sha Cage said she was proud of everyone who helped make the Teen Summit a success. (Photo by Dennis Geisinger)

A Teen Summit event hosted last Saturday on the University of Minnesota’s West Bank, sponsored by local arts association MN Spoken Word (MNSWA) and positive-body-image group Girls in Motion, connected more than 160 youths and mentors for the cause of leadership, art and activism in the world and in the communities in which they live.

“There’s nothing but good things to say about how proud we were of all the great leadership moments, the participants’ comments, the fantastic guests, the teamwork, reaching 99 percent of our goals,” said Minneapolis spoken-word artist and development director for MNSWA, Sha Cage.

Cage acted as speaker and spark- plug for Summit teens, shouting encouragement and introducing fellow youth leaders by turns. The University’s College of Liberal Arts supported the event as a recruitment tool for local minority youth, calling on English Department faculty member and author of “Amistad”, Alex Pate, to make the case for higher education. The Summit was also supported by the Walker Art Center, which filmed the event, and representatives from YouthNOISE, a social networking website based in San Francisco that describes itself as a site “for people under the age of 27 who like to connect based on deeper interests than Paris Hilton’s wardrobe.”

“The growth in usage of the internet has put information into teens’ hands, and they eat it up,” said Ginger Thomson, CEO of YouthNOISE, Inc. “A young man from Minneapolis who joined our network a few years ago told me that his inspiration for a very serious dedication to bettering the world came from music—music that inspired him to go and do something and make a difference. He invented a water filter that now provides clean water to tens of thousands of people in Northern Ghana at no cost to them and very little cost to anyone else. He is the kind of young leader who will indeed make this planet a better place,” Thomson said.

Teen from around the Twin Cities participated at the Teen Summit. (Photo by Dennis Geisinger)

“Another group of youths [in Minneapolis] have started an effort to create more positive attitudes towards the north end of the city—and they are busily working away to publicly highlight all the terrific things about their neighborhood, to raise tolerance and reduce fear and intolerance. What a great crew!” Thomson said.
Minneapolis’ District 61B State Rep. Neva Walker was also on hand to tune teens into the political process, asking the assembly, “Do you want to say how much you pay for school or to ride the bus? Well, it’s me and my colleagues at the Capitol that make those kinds of decisions,” Walker said.

“And do you know who my boss is?” Walker queried the crowd. A young girl in the middle of crowd seemed tentative, but raised her hand anyway.
“We are,” the teenager said.