Adults Take Home Lessons on Reaching Out to Youths

Jonquil Urdaz noticed the irony.

At a day devoted to youth issues in the east county, she was one of only two young people who attended Thursday’s conference.

“It’s kind of stupid,” said Jonquil, 17. “It’s a youth summit but there’s only two youths.”

But the Simi Valley Youth Council member was nonetheless delighted for the opportunity to tell 125 adult youth service providers what troubles kids her age are facing today.

Representatives from each city in the affluent east county gathered at Amgen’s world headquarters to share information about local youth programs and to discuss what additional services are needed.

“We would like to see that agencies are more educated about youth issues,” said Sarah Asplin, 16, also of the Simi Valley Youth Council. “If we continue to search for issues, we can continue to solve them before they get out of control.”

Sarah and Jonquil talked about a teen survey being conducted by the youth council that will rank the issues Simi Valley teens say trouble them most. There are plenty, they say: eating disorders, sexually transmitted diseases, troubles with parents and drugs.

“I think the No. 1 misconception is we are the safest city, therefore we don’t have problems,” Jonquil said. “We have honors students doing drugs.”

Supervisor Frank Schillo, who helped sponsor the event, said the drug problem surprised him. But he said it is exactly these types of nitty-gritty issues that he wants to get out on the table.

Other topics discussed were tobacco use, sex education, gangs, after school services and a deficiency of counseling and mentoring programs.

“How they ever make it through it all is amazing to me,” said Schillo, who plans to make the summit an annual event.

On lighter issues, the Oak Park panel talked about the need for a skateboarding park, while the Thousand Oaks group discussed what the city is doing to offer affordable child care. Participants also wrestled with how to get youngsters more involved with community-sponsored activities.

“This is to find out what we can prioritize and start funding and fulfilling that need,” Schillo said.

Don Gill, of the Thousand Oaks Library, learned about a new community computer center in Moorpark. He thinks it might work well at his city’s library as well.

The issues youngsters face today are not all that different than when he was a kid, Gill said. The only difference now, he said, is they are openly discussed.

“If we keep hiding them under the rug . . . they’ll never go away,” he said.