The youth of Schuylkill County gathered at the county courthouse Thursday for the second annual Youth Summit.
The event gave students from at least 18 different school districts, technical institutions and universities in the county to discuss with local business, community and legislative leaders how they can make Schuylkill County a better place to work, live and raise families.
"We all feel this was a great invitation to put you in control of our future," Commissioner Gary J. Hess said Thursday.
Hess spearheaded the project along with fellow commissioners and Kay Jones, executive director of Schuylkill County's VISION, and other community organizations, legislative offices and business associations.
The Panther Valley and Hazleton Area school districts were new to the summit this year. Panther Valley encompasses Coaldale while Hazleton includes McAdoo borough and Kline, North Union and East Union townships in Schuylkill County.
The students kicked off the event with presentations highlighting projects they started at last year's summit. They then broke off into three different groups with business leaders, educators and legislators to target the number one issue regarding the three main problems in the county as identified in a survey earlier this year: public safety, jobs and quality of life.
The committees then took their ideas about how to address the problem and presented them to a mock council consisting of students. The council then picked the idea they liked best.
The council chose the public safety committee's proposal of reintroducing driver's education into the schools.
"One of the reasons why we wanted to do this is because as you continue our projects, you may need to deal with borough councils so we want to give you an idea of how it works," Jones said.
Brad Gotshall, 23, a member of the Frackville borough council, served as guest speaker at the event.
"As we have been saying all morning, this is our future," Gotshall said.
Gotshall was first elected to the borough council at age 18. He was also the Republican candidate for the county clerk of courts in 2011 but was unsuccessful. Gotshall is currently a clerk typist in the county treasurer's office and majoring in public policy at Penn State Harrisburg.
Gotshall said Schuylkill County has a population of about 147,000 people and there are 326 budget-making positions throughout the 67 municipalities.
"If you want to get involved and make these changes, run for office," he said.
Gotshall said running for office was a great learning experience. He also told students to attend council meetings and get out and vote. He said each vote matters, noting that the district attorney race this past year was decided by 67 votes.
"That's one vote in each municipality," he said. "I want to stress the importance of voting and stress the importance of getting involved."
Collin Boris, a senior at Blue Mountain High School, said he enjoyed working with other students throughout the event.
"It was a lot of fun," Boris said. "It was really cool to interact with other students."
Ashley Fannick, a junior at Marion High School, also said it was great to see what other students think about each other's ideas.
"It was interesting with all the different schools being intermingled and the kids being able to talk with each other and get feedback from them," Fannick said.