Jonathan Meyer.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written a strictly Tama-Toledo themed column. After thinking about conversations last week, connections have been running through my head. A big thought came to my mind, “how active are young people in our community?”. While broad, there’s a lot of value in the question. Of course you might think of middle and high school students working at the grocery stores and our MANY fast food establishments but what outside of work are the young people doing? That’s today’s big idea, what can young people be doing.

For one, I firmly believe there’s a correlation between civic engagement and local pride. If someone has skin in the game, of course they’re going to take a lot more ownership of the area around them. I seriously think we have a problem with young people not enjoying our community. Creating and encouraging new or undiscovered opportunities is the first step to fix that.

Tama-Toledo has some seriously untapped opportunities for our young people. My brain first goes to our nursing homes. The wealth of experience and knowledge available within our local care facilities is mind boggling. Mixing our young people with experienced community members who are living the lives many of us dream about, that’s powerful. It warms my heart to see when the music students go share their talent and gifts with these folks. Let’s strive for more of those moments. I think about students in the middle school writing courses, how many ways you could easily incorporate letters being sent to the care facility to help develop writing skills. Even just a few eager youth taking time out of their busy week’s to stop in and build a relationship with someone they aren’t related to could be a huge perspective builder. Let’s be curious and strive for more ways to connect.

Continuing with connection, our different activities are so well featured in both the newspaper and the school’s various social media pages. Our students are visible and we see highlights of good things going on. Using that infrastructure to promote and find service opportunities is a great next step. An example: I find myself volunteering at band concerts. I’ll see the date on the district social media page and set time aside to help out with something that matters to me. I guarantee there are more ways to do very similar things. We could flood the humane society with more support than ever. Or get a crew of school aged kids to shovel snow on a snow day, although we might be cutting grass in a few weeks! Different sports teams can find odd jobs around town to do. That instills elements of service into our culture. Possibilities are endless for volunteer opportunities.

Touching briefly on what one person thinks our community could use is great…but I hope it sparks a few thoughts in people’s minds. It takes curious people, working together to create positive change. I don’t expect things to magically fall into place and our two towns will function at a higher level and we retain more people and all our problems are solved. Great stuff in theory but let’s take it one step at a time. Live with your values on full display and encourage others to do the same. Our community improves when we talk and act on our ideas, no matter how big or small.

While I might not have all the answers, one thing is for certain, I’m Just Jonathan.