Empowering the next generation of leaders.

That's the goal of a youth summit that connected student leaders in Louisville with opportunities to network and learn from other community advocates.

The West Louisville Youth Empowerment Summit also gave students the chance to learn and discuss policies affecting them and their peers.

At Jefferson County Public Schools.

So this event is essentially an opportunity to uplift youth voices and really gain their perspective and understand their experiences as it relates to JCPenney's policies and empower student leaders.

When I started coming to this program, it was more like a path for students to take or just like an event for students so they can know where they're going in life or just like talk about mental health issues or just talk to someone.

Because I feel like in this community, specifically the Russell community, there's not a lot of options for students or young people, but things like these are really good for the youth.

You can touch the world and make an impact right now where you stand today and whatever scale you're at.

That's the biggest thing that we want them to take away.

But also we want to illuminate their voices and really highlight youth experiences as it relates to JCP policy.

It's been a big transportation and school choice, have been a big controversy the past couple of years, right?

Particularly transportation as in the past few months.

And a lot of these conversations have not really considered and intentionally centered.

Youth Voices has been centered around a lot of data and a lot of numbers.

But as much as those things can be helpful, data and numbers don't tell stories.

People tell stories.

Today I'm coming here to talk about the changes in JCP s and how this affects students, specifically people in magnet schools.

Because I go to DuPont, Emmanuel High School and I got to choose my major and I got to choose where I wanted to go in my high school career.

And I feel like that's very useful for students, especially if you know where you where you want to go and life something.

And I really try to impress upon young people, which is the only thing you can be, is you.

The only thing that we're here for is to give you a platform to be able to do that at the highest level and and to help you grow your capacity understanding of what you can't be right.

So I think a lot of people try to be a GPS for young people telling young people where to go when in our reality we need to be a map that shows them the possibilities and events like this.

Our aim to be that map.

We're not telling young people, Here's what you need to do.

My goal is to open a platform so they can tell us what they need and we can just provide a map and a blueprint.

And just to really show the poss The Louisville Central Community Center hosts the free event every year.

This is the eighth year for the program.