Freshman Moses Starobin, sophomore Abbie Alexander and junior Tegan Derro represent District 4, the voting district containing Midtown, in Fulton County Youth Commission (FCYC). The student-led program chooses high school students to advocate for their communities.
When students are accepted into the program, they are assigned to subgroups with different focuses. Derro and Alexander are members of the environmental subgroup, while Starobin is in the health subgroup.
“[We] think of issues in the Fulton County area and around our schools that need to be addressed through [our] lens, and then that’s how we come up with our volunteer projects,” Derro said. “Sometimes we send it over to [the] legislature because [the] legislature is very involved with the Board of Education and Fulton County.”
In addition to being in the environmental subgroup, Alexander wants to focus on addressing drug addiction in schools. She is interested in organizing instructor visits to high schools and teaching about the detrimental effects of drugs and overdose preparation skills.
“I want to be able to get on the ground, meet people, talk to people and spread the message through a more face-to-face way, because I think that’s how most community change comes about,” Alexander said. “I think that would be absolutely amazing, being able to spread a good message, along with being able to talk to people and meet the people I actually represent.”
This year, the environmental subgroup aims to tackle issues such as water accessibility and pollution. Derro said, in previous years, FCYC has not been as involved in hands-on activities with a direct environmental impact.
“They’ve built greenhouses, but the main thing they focused on was murals for schools, which I still think is super important, but I’d like to incorporate more [activities], like planting trees,” Derro said.
As a part of the health subgroup, Starobin hopes to create programs eliminating food deserts and ensuring students around Fulton County have access to nutritional food options.
“The modern diet is filled with unhealthy foods, loaded with excessive sugars and artificial chemicals that most people can’t even pronounce,” Starobin said. “This is crazy to me. I’m a very healthy person so it disturbs me when other people aren’t treating their bodies right.”
In addition to planning new initiatives, Youth Commissioners regularly participate in Saturday volunteer activities. These include running toy drives and bringing cleaning supplies to lower-income families.
“Around every Christmas and around every Thanksgiving, we do drives where we let homeless or lower-income families come into Walmart and we give them a voucher and they can buy anything that they need within a certain budget,” Alexander said. “It’s for the children to be able to have food on Christmas. We work with the Atlanta Food Bank to provide food there.”
FCYC students can participate in ”Day at the Capitol,” an annual event where students meet with legislators and share their ideas. In previous years, FCYC has helped pass laws involving an increased dropout age and cyberbullying prevention.
“We get to work with [legislators] every year,” Alexander said. “We get to talk with our commissioner members, and sometimes legislators will come down and say, ‘We need ideas for this.’ And we’ll say, ‘Okay, these are what we see in the future.’”
This year, about 200 students applied to FCYC, but only around 30 were accepted.The application process consisted of an essay and an interview.
“It’s definitely an incredibly rigorous application process, but I encourage everybody to apply if they [can], because it’s not a grade-based or an academic-based program,” Alexander said. “The program is based on if you have leadership skills, and if you seem like you genuinely have ideas and creativity and the passion and the drive to make change in your community.”
FCYC aims to teach students leadership and advocacy skills. Both Derro and Alexander believe FCYC will improve their communication and speaking skills, while encouraging an open mindset.
“By being around these amazing speakers who are well-articulate and well-versed, I’m going to excel to a point where I’m going to be able to surpass my normal level,” Alexander said. “I think I’m definitely going to gain a broader perspective of how to communicate with people, because the commission encompasses all sorts of races, all sorts of religious views, all sorts of ages [and] all sorts of political views.”
Starobin and Alexander believe FCYC acts as the eyes and ears of Fulton County high school students and views FCYC as their most direct opportunity to make a difference in their community through a tangible measure.
“It’s not about what the program can do for me, it’s [about] what I can do for the program,” Starobin said.
