Yes. So as as we all know, most places in the US require you to be 18 to vote and many states you can't be a felon and vote. So there's different ways that people don't are disenfranchised or don't have the capacity to vote, and this is one important way of contributing to the political process. Outside of that, there's lots of other good models of ways we can think about how young people can be involved, feel their perspectives are heard. Some of those include youth-adult partnerships. So different places across the country are using and implementing this model, which has been around for a while. Youth-adult partnerships generally refer to an organization or a group or a setting that has two partnerships between youth and adults. So there are many organizations where it's called youth-adult partnership, but the adults make all the decisions, decide everything, and do everything and the kids are just along for the ride. True youth-adult partnership refers to equal partners and each contributing the assets they have. Generally, young people have energy, and passion, and drive, and sometimes creativity, and how to enact those things. Older people, sometimes have wisdom and experience and understand the long game and small wins. So when those two things are combined, they can be a real potent mix and are very powerful experience for both parties. All right. So the adults are getting something and the young people are getting something by that experience. For example, in New York City, is experimenting with this idea with what are called youth leadership councils across the five boroughs. So the model is to pick youth who demonstrate leadership potential. This is more of a policy model of youth leadership, not kids only with high test scores, or high GPA, or high achieving in other ways, but kids who show leadership potential in ways that might not be obvious. Those kids are selected into a program that provides training, they research ideas that are important to them, that matter to them in their community, into their schools, and then they present the results of that research to policymakers and decision makers in order to try to shape policy. So in New York City, they present to school leadership, the mayor's office, and other kind of communities within the New York City area in order to try to enact change that they see. So there's a way of mobilizing the talents and energies of youth and harnessing that width the capacities that older people have, and doing that together. So that's been one model that's been successful and there are others as well. This answer could be sliced in lots of different ways. One way to slice why young people's perspective is important is, we have a representative democracy and the idea is to have all citizens in the country to have their perspective and interests represented in the political process. If young people can't participate in that process, then in some ways, their perspective isn't represented in the democracy, so we're not a full democracy in that way. Another way of thinking about this is, young people are, in some ways, they have more at stake, because they're going to be alive for longer than older people. So they're very invested in shaping the political process because they're going to be inheriting the Earth and inheriting a political process we have for longer spans of time than older people. So it's important in that way. A third reason to think about why it's important to have young people involved is, young people are going to be older people over time, and we need to have generations of people who are politically and civically involved, who have the capacities to dialogue across difference, to think complexly about issues, to understand nuance, to have empathy and to take the perspective of other people. Without doing that when people are young, it gets harder to do that when people become older. So these core competencies or skills that we can call this skills a democracy, but are also important non-cognitive or developmental skills. We want people to have another spaces as well. Are important so that we have generations of leaders and citizens who are able to truly realize the promise of democracy. Then another reason is just that we have a longstanding disparity of young people being less involved in the political system. I mean, I think sometimes when you're young, and maybe not a full adult, but an adult in age, it feels like this isn't relevant to you, or it doesn't reflect your interests, or you have more fun things to do, and I understand that. But there's a way in which young people who over 18, but maybe not 30, their perspectives may be aren't as fully and put it into the political process as it could be, and so their interests aren't realized in the same way, in which older adults have mobilized and are very active politically, and therefore have more responsiveness from political officials. I think it's important for young people to find a cause, or an issue, or dilemma, that feels personally meaningful for them, and to think of a way of becoming involved in that way. For some people, that's a candidate, and so they're moved possibly because a particular candidate is running and that candidate reflects their interests in some way that speaks to them. For other people, it's issue specifics, such as animal cruelty, or environmental injustice, or racial disparities and policing. So thinking about a way to become motivated and engaged in the process is often a way to think about something as personally meaningful to you, and that leads to a sustained engagement on these issues. So I think that's often the first step. A common error or mistake, I think young people sometimes do, is to think, "I'm really energetic about this issue, so I'm going to work really hard at it for a short period of time, and then I expect major change overnight." So I think another way to think about sustaining interest over time is to think about finding a community of people who you feel solidarity with, who share similar interests to you, and are willing to collaborate with you and organize together and support each other in the process of trying to enact change you see in the world. So I think, a lot of times, we see examples of people, and more often, young people, thinking that doing this individually or without a community is a good way to go, and we see a lot of people who suffer from that because they carry a lot of the burdens for others. For example, there's good evidence on young people who are undocumented in California particular, taking a lot of the energy and advocacy and organizing work on and neglecting their own lives so a great deal, and then burning out and not having the capacity to sustain those movements. Versus, if that effort was more shared among more people, then perhaps those young people can be engaged and sustaining those issues for longer periods of time. So I think thinking about sustaining for things over longer periods of time, thinking about people you feel solidarity or commitment with, and thinking about something that's personally meaningful are great starting points. Then from there, I think engaging with others and finding issues and ideas that engage you and are captivating to you, and sustaining with those over time as a way to stay and channel that motivation over time.
