How youth are making their voices heard in Clark County

Hmm.

Um, I wanna turn to the work that you're doing for this year.

As you, as you noted, the, the current year's work sort of piggybacks on the previous one, and, and this year you're focusing on, on space, on places.

Um, Hu- Shaunak, what's the, what's the focus, in your words, for this year?

Yeah.

So this year's focus is on third spaces, which is really an area classically defined as outside of school or outside of your home where people are able to go, especially in their teen years, to really express themselves.

So that's kind of where our focus lies 'cause we're trying to see different research around making sure that there's more third spaces 'cause a lot of the barriers include, you know, they're expensive to go to or people don't have transportation to go to them.

So, so far this year we've had some good work on that.

We even recently talked to someone from, uh, p- uh, Public Works at the park, uh, where we talked about parks and how, you know, different greenery areas can also help for a lot of people's third spaces.

Evan, I mean, are, are there enough third spaces in Clark County for young people? I, I guess I'm thinking about pa- parks, libraries, coffee shops where you have to pay-

Yeah

... a mall where you may or not have access to one.

Or, or maybe I'm just think- thinking about [laughs] what things are like a long time ago when I was your age.

Yeah.

So I think it really depends on the person.

And so one thing we've noticed is that the definition of third spaces really varies from person to person.

So for one person it might be a large group of people or, for example, maybe at, like, a sporting event, something like that, or it could be somewhere, like you said, like a cozy cafe or something like that.

So it really comes down to what the individual is looking for.

And so one of our recommendations in our previous year when we were looking at mental health and third spaces was making sure different types of third spaces were available and were easy to find.

So I think a large part of our work is also going to be about trying to bring up more spaces so that there's more of variety for kids and teens to choose from.

Hmm.

Um, I wanna turn to the work that you're doing for this year.

As you, as you noted, the, the current year's work sort of piggybacks on the previous one, and, and this year you're focusing on, on space, on places.

Um, Hu- Shaunak, what's the, what's the focus, in your words, for this year?

Yeah.

So this year's focus is on third spaces, which is really an area classically defined as outside of school or outside of your home where people are able to go, especially in their teen years, to really express themselves.

So that's kind of where our focus lies 'cause we're trying to see different research around making sure that there's more third spaces 'cause a lot of the barriers include, you know, they're expensive to go to or people don't have transportation to go to them.

So, so far this year we've had some good work on that.

We even recently talked to someone from, uh, p- uh, Public Works at the park, uh, where we talked about parks and how, you know, different greenery areas can also help for a lot of people's third spaces.

Evan, I mean, are, are there enough third spaces in Clark County for young people? I, I guess I'm thinking about pa- parks, libraries, coffee shops where you have to pay-

Yeah

... a mall where you may or not have access to one.

Or, or maybe I'm just think- thinking about [laughs] what things are like a long time ago when I was your age.

Yeah.

So I think it really depends on the person.

And so one thing we've noticed is that the definition of third spaces really varies from person to person.

So for one person it might be a large group of people or, for example, maybe at, like, a sporting event, something like that, or it could be somewhere, like you said, like a cozy cafe or something like that.

So it really comes down to what the individual is looking for.

And so one of our recommendations in our previous year when we were looking at mental health and third spaces was making sure different types of third spaces were available and were easy to find.

So I think a large part of our work is also going to be about trying to bring up more spaces so that there's more of variety for kids and teens to choose from.