The California Youth Advocacy Conference Recap: LARPing in the Redwoods
This July, BREATHE staff and members of our Youth Advisory Board (YAB) had the opportunity to attend the annual California Youth Advocacy Network (CYAN)’s Summer Youth Advocacy Conference for the second time, at the stunning Happy Valley Conference Center near Santa Cruz, California. CYAN hosts this conference annually with the goal of empowering youth to engage in local policy efforts, drive systems change, and create change in their communities through the lens of tobacco-related issues.
Over the four-day conference, youth attendees are given opportunities to connect with peers from similar organizations throughout California. They showcased their talents at an open-mic night, explored the natural bounty of the Happy Valley Conference Center grounds, and shared their hopes and concerns for their communities around tobacco. Additionally, they participated in extensive Live Action Role Play (LARP) activities that took them through an advocacy cycle.
LARPing is at the heart of the conference, providing youth attendees with the closest thing to “real world” practice in a supportive setting. Youth groups from across the state come together to form new coalitions for the LARP activity, and this year, our YAB was fortunate enough to team up with Breathe California of the Bay Area, Golden Gate, and Central Coast’s youth group! Attendees participated in a variety of workshops that provided training on coalition planning, smoke-free outdoor air policies, Tobacco Retail Licenses, data collection, media for advocacy, developing an advocacy strategy, working on a Midwest Academy Strategy Chart (MASC), and meeting with decision makers. These skills were then applied in fictional “Solaris County”. The youth groups set up on the property and engaged in retails surveys, collected key informant interviews, and collaborated with other fictional coalitions to create a new proposed Tobacco Retail License for Solaris County. The conference culminated with all of the fictional coalitions presenting to the Solaris County Board of Supervisors and Tribal Council and receiving a vote on their proposed policy. Our coalition successfully got their policy passed!
The CYAN summer conference offers a unique and valuable opportunity for youth interested in community change and advocacy to gain a practical understanding of the advocacy process. It provides a safe and supportive environment for attendees to build and practice these new skills. As an adult coordinator, it is always so inspiring to see the number of youths who come together here each summer, sacrificing a few days of their personal time, bravely leaving home, meeting new people, and learning how to change their worlds for the better. We can’t wait for next year!
