Young voices fuel coal county transformations

Rural counties are working with their youth to create economic diversification plans and build a community that young people want to stay in. Floyd County, Ky., Forest County, Pa. and Somerset County, Pa. — communities that have historically been reliant on coal production — involved high school students in their work with NACo’s Building Resilience in Coal Communities (BRECC) initiative, which helps rural counties revitalize and diversify their economies amid a declining mining industry. 

“Including young people in community work is essential, because those are the people who are going to be living the reality that we’re trying to create,” said V Konopka, a West Virginia Community Development Hub community coaching coordinator participating in BRECC. “Those are the people who are going to be pushing the work forward, and if they don’t have a say in it, why would they want to stay in the community or stay engaged with that community?”

A driving force behind rural communities seeking youth input in community planning is the prevalence of “brain drain” — which is when highly trained and educated people leave a community to find better pay or opportunities — in Appalachia, according to Konopka. 

“Retaining youth is important,” Konopka said. “Because if you don’t have people, you don’t have a community, you don’t have an economy.”

Somerset County held two youth engagement sessions related to economic diversification in which students provided feedback on what young people want to see the county build into its development planning. 

In one of the engagement sessions, young people involved with the county’s technology center provided input on the community’s efforts to expand broadband access and use artificial intelligence, and in the other, students in leadership roles at the local high school identified big-picture issues that matter most to youth.

“You can’t look backward,” Somerset County Commissioner Pamela Tokar-Ickes said. “You have to always look toward the future, and the only way to do that is to engage our youth.”

Third spaces, apprenticeships, outdoor recreation

Olivia Hay, a junior at Somerset High School, was one of 10 Youth Government program students who provided feedback on what young people value in the community. Priorities identified in the youth engagement session included creating more education-to-employment pipelines and apprenticeships, establishing safe “third spaces” and investing in mental health resources, outdoor recreation and public transportation.”

“One of the biggest things is the need for ‘third spaces’ — places for students to hang out with other young people, but still be safe in their community, that aren’t at home or at school,” Hay said. “Public transportation is also something that we really lack in Somerset County. 

“If you live far away from the school, your access to things in town is almost nonexistent, so the community of students outside of school is rather nonexistent, and I think that’s something that really needs to matter in a small town.”

Increasing access to healthcare and mental health and substance use disorder resources have consistently been identified as youth priorities across the rural communities Konopka has worked with through the West Virginia Community Development Hub and BRECC, they said. Youth wanting to see more workforce opportunities is another common sentiment, they added.

“They were really straightforward and really vulnerable in those sessions, which I deeply appreciated,” Konopka said. “But we talked a lot about depression and anxiety, and substance use disorder in the communities that they experience, either in their families or out in the community, so there’s a deep awareness of that. 

“And a lot of the high schoolers said that they wanted to be able to stay where they lived in their communities for a variety of different reasons, but the challenge is that they couldn’t see a pathway to staying there, in terms of job opportunities that they cared about or they were interested in. They were acutely aware of the kinds of jobs that were disappearing from their communities.”

Somerset County held a program last fall raising awareness for suicide prevention that highlighted resources for youth seeking help — the county needs more of that kind of work, Hay said.

“I think that we should be having more opportunities like that for people to engage with mental health topics and talk about them,” Hay said. “Because it’s something that’s a growing issue throughout all of America, but especially in small towns where people might not be willing to talk about it, and I think that opening those spaces is very important.”

Creating a youth advisory committee

That type of input is what Somerset County wants more of, which is why it’s creating a Youth Advisory Committee for the county’s Board of Commissioners. The committee will launch in the fall and will include students across the county’s 11 public school districts and private schools, according to Tokar-Ickes. Forest County is also working to create a youth advisory council, according to Cynthia Crytzer, Tionesta Borough’s manager who is involved with the county’s participation in BRECC.

“I do think that that youth voice has been missing,” Tokar-Ickes said. “I look around the rooms that I’m in, and the average age is probably skewing higher than it used to be, because we don’t have younger people in the room, and we need to. 

“We need to engage kids at a younger age, especially today, so that they can learn the importance of being engaged in their community, and the importance of knowing what’s happening in the world around you.”

Hay is one of the student leaders informing the creation of Somerset County’s Youth Advisory Committee. She’s eager for the community to build out more civic engagement opportunities for youth. 

“Young people and students are the foundation for the future … we’re the backbone,” Hay said. “And there seems to be this kind of disconnect in between different generations. I think it’s important to bridge that gap, and the best way we could do that is by bringing a consistent flow of students into something like an advisory board to bring our ideas into fruition to make our town better.”