GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- A group of Grand Rapids students will go in front of a panel of city leaders to talk about immigration at the annual Kids Speak summit on Friday.
"Our Community's Children is a public, private partnership between the City of Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids Public Schools and community partners," said Program Coordinator of Our Community's Children Shannon L. Harris. "We exist to create initiative and programs that better prepare it our young people for college, for work and for life."
Kids Speak was created to give youth in the community a voice and to let them be heard when it comes to major issues.
"It is our annual event, it is facilitated by our Mayor's Youth Council so our young people actually come up with the topic every year," Harris said. "They create essay prompts to help other young people frame their testimony around that subject so this years Mayor's Youth Council decided that immigration was something they wanted to talk about. "
Forty students will read testimonies in front of the mayor, city commissioners, county commissioners, GRPS Board of Education and other community leaders, some of the students are even immigrants themselves.
"With the Mayor's Youth Council essay prompts about 12 essay prompts and asked other young people to respond to them," Harris said. "And so some of the testimonies are about their personal experiences, being immigrants, some of the testimonies are talking about recommendations that community leaders can do so that immigrants and refugees feel that Grand Rapids is a safe place for them so it is a variety of opinions, a variety of recommendations but most importantly is voices of young people that are actually being heard."
The event is free, open to the public and begins at 10 a.m. at Grand Rapids City Hall.
