| Completely Different : Tainted Youth |
 December 15, 2011 By Elizabeth Gross |
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 Do you realize that people in bigger cities would give anything to be you? There are people who are tired of living the fast-paced life of the big city. They want their own piece of “the good life.” How do I know? Growing up, I was one of them. I grew up in Denver until we moved back when I started high school. Our family, who lives in the area, brought us back to the valley every Christmas, Thanksgiving and Oregon Trail Days. How I wished to be like the other kids from around here. Until I lived here I had no idea what kind of stereotyping many young people have to deal with. I find it very funny that our city, county and state governments continue to throw money at all of these revitalization projects. Their hope is to keep young people from moving away. Officials continue to scratch their heads wondering why all these young people leave and never come back. The obvious answer is that a bright student can find better opportunity elsewhere. I think the hope that some people have is that their children will go to college and experience “the world,” then they will come back to raise a family. But the fact of the matter is, why would they return to an area with no job prospects? If they did return, why would they come back to only make a quarter of what they do now? Instead of shouting the same rhetoric that we need to bring jobs to rural America, our government officials need to look at the core issue. Why are young people leaving? First of all let me start by saying that if you are trying to find a solution as to why young people leave a rural community; perhaps you should actually have people who are young in a committee. Recently, I attended a pre-legislative breakfast hosted by the Scottsbluff/ Gering Chamber of Commerce. I was the youngest person in the room. What I learned from attending this presentation is they have no idea what it is like to be a young person in a community such as ours. An individual made a comment that it was pointless to waste our money on the youth. Young people don’t have a good worth ethic in the first place. Bingo! Here is the problem – this skewed perception that if a small group of people acts a certain way, it is true about all people in that group. We can’t make the battle cry that “children are our future,” when we think so little of them. Recently, I read an article saying that my generation (Generation Y) had the power to save our economy. It said that we are a generation of young people starting our own businesses. We have seen what happens when our parents lost their jobs and have decided to take control of our fates. As it becomes increasingly difficult to find a “traditional” job, these young entrepreneurs are finding a way around it. Many of these young people have created three or four business and will continue to create jobs. They love the thrill of a startup. These businesses are not failing, they are thriving. What great potential! However, this forward thinking is not something I see in rural America. We come up with excuses for everything. Why did you leave? There is nothing for me to do. Why don’t we create a safe place for young people to hang out? There is no point; they will never take care of it anyway. Why don’t we create job training programs? What a waste of money! These no-good kids have a crummy work ethic. We need to give young people more credit. There are many kids who are going to school, working full time and in some cases, raising a family. It is our job as a community to provide our children with a sense of belonging. They crave for a place to call their own. Not every child is going to jump into a career in agriculture. Not every child is going to want to become a nurse. Instead, the kids who think outside the box are working minimum wage jobs and become increasingly bitter about their hometowns. Another idea that was also brought forth at the Chamber presentation was a new internship program. The bill would provide for-profit employers a grant to employ college students. An applicant must be attending a two or four year school and must have a permanent residence in the state of Nebraska. The idea is that after the internship is finished a student will stay in the State of Nebraska. Again, great idea in theory but who is this benefiting? There is no guarantee that the student will even stay in the state after the internship is finished. This idea also benefits our neighbors to the east. They have a better chance of finding a better paying job. There are just more opportunities on the other end of the state. What about the kids whose families can’t afford to send them to college? Sure, we have programs like Upward Bound but it seems like every two years these great programs are on the chopping block. What officials need to do in our neck of the woods is to start thinking about the youth. Stop with the excuses and actually take the time to think about them. We need them; otherwise western Nebraska is doomed to be a “ghost town.” |
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