Youth Leadership Congress April-May '95

Signed T-Shirt

   
     In the spring of 1995, the ADA gathered a bunch of active and outgoing kids from across the country in order to form a nation wide joint mission to petition to state senators, asking them to continue with funding diabetes related organizations and research by asking for their support for two bills that provided medicare funding for self-management training. I, two other PA Teen Weekend friends, and two other guys received the honor of attending the conference to represent PA. Us 3 teen weekend kids received the nomination from the weekends' director.

     A secondary goal of the conference was to invigorate young minds and use their driving desire to make diabetes easier to manage, better funded and intelligently received by the general public. We were supposed to brainstorm creative ways to reach our goals, and bring them back to our specific areas to implement. I was never ambitious enough to carry the momentum from the conference to daily life, and all of our ideas, whatever they were, remained in committee.

     We did succeeded in having a good time, and meeting with people with diabetes from across the country. I do not remember all that much of the conference, but I did take pictures, and there are some points that have stuck out:

• I was late to the first meeting where we role-called our specific states, and I had to sit in the back with the group of delegates from Utah. They were loud, fun, and when it was their turn to announce themselves, they adapted a very drawn out, countrified accented "You-Taw"

• I remember the brainstorming events vaguely in the conference rooms, with dry erase boards, easels, and hours of discussion and role playing how we could push the agenda of diabetes awareness back in our respective towns. We were grouped together by region, so we were the northeastern region.

• I remember we had a  70's dress up dance that I came very prepared for. I was a little cringeworthy-obnoxious.

 

• I remember giving a speech to be the regional youth leader of the Northeastern Region in a suit jacket and flowery skirt...taking a platform that appearances didn't matter: actions did.

• I remember getting dressed up properly to go visit the people who represented each of our state senator's interests. I remember the one woman we met with was very distracting: she was apparently missing a button on her shirt AND she also forgot to wear her top undergarment. 0-for-2: she must have been having a rough morning.
• I kept in contact with one person out of everyone I met who was from Washington state and one of the Northeastern Lead Staffers

• The first night there, they had an ice breaker entertainment performance by some magician / hypnotist who performed on some of the other delegates. I was not involved directly with this one, and was a little embarrassing to watch.
• I spent some of the downtime walking around Georgetown, and going to some of the music stores.