A common complaint whenever there is news of graffiti and other mischief around town, or reports of young people out drinking in a park and causing a disturbance as well as damages, is that young people seem to have no direction or purpose.
People decry how young people spray paint tags on businesses, or seem lazy and shiftless, or mouth back to other people and seem disrespectful.
May I suggest that first of all, these are, to coin a phrase, "a few bad apples"; they are the exception, not the rule, even though there are people who insist, "it only takes one bad apple to spoil the barrel".
There are many examples of young people who are doing well and who do good things in the community, and in fact are good leaders and role models for younger children.
I would point to some obvious examples, such as the recent national student leadership conference that Weyburn hosted. Something like 300 of the students from the Comp were involved in some way, and a large group were actual student leaders for their colleagues from across Canada.
More recently, we had the Communithon fundraiser for the United Way; two youth were an integral part of the event, Marissa McCallum and Decker Mainil, as Lady Charity and Captain United respectively. Many, many other youth were also involved as performers or volunteers, helping raise the funds for the United Way.
Another charity also saw many young people take a leadership role, the Juvenile Diabetes Walk for A Cure, and then most recently, the Festival of Trees for the Family Place. If you looked for the volunteers wearing Family Place T-shirts, you would have seen a number of youth among their numbers, helping out.
Another recent example was a young lady who had exceptionally long, light blonde hair, and she cut off a 15-inch length of it so she could help cancer patients, by having a wig made from her hair.
When I asked why she did this, which must be a rather drastic change to the hairstyle she's had for the past few years, she replied that she wanted to do something good.
So when I hear this, and see all the other recent examples where young people are contributing and doing good things, I feel a lot better about the state of youth in our community and in our country.
Sure, there will be a "bad apples", but maybe it's early enough that some of those young people can yet be turned around.
The next time you feel like you want to complain about the youth of today, remember there are some who are making a positive difference here.
