Photo courtesy of Amy Carson Dennis.
CONA
The Alabama delegation to CONA, known as the “family of Alabama,” included Mountain Brook students Ben Jackson, Amelia Putnam, Hannah Mouyal, Lewis Fitzpatrick, Kelley Jiang and Natalie Jones.
In ninth grade, Ben Jackson was pleasantly surprised to find a group of students who shared his passion for politics and policy in YMCA Youth Legislature at Mountain Brook Junior High School.
“We are all passionate about making some sort of difference,” said Jackson.
After his first year in the program, in which students from around the state present and debate their own bills in a mock legislative session in Montgomery, Jackson was selected as one of about 20 Alabama delegates to the Conference on National Affairs (CONA).
This summer, the conference hosted more than 600 YMCA Youth in Government students from almost 40 states at the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain, N.C. Jackson was selected to be one of the six presiding officers in the 2015 conference. Zijie Yin, Mountain Brook High School class of 2013, served as a presiding officer at this year’s conference.
Rather than being a legislative session, CONA’s purpose is to expose students to national and international issues while they discuss their own ideas on how to solve complicated problems. Students debate and vote on bills at Youth in Government mock legislatures, whereas delegates at CONA develop and discuss proposals.
“The difference is actually pretty important,” Jackson said. “The Conference on National Affairs is meant to be a forum for discussion and ideas.”
Jackson said that in addition to making a close group of new friends at the conference, he was also exposed to many new ideas and perspectives.
“CONA has opened me up to a lot of different ideas politically and ways of looking at problems that I wouldn’t have thought of before,” he said.
Other Mountain Brook delegates to the conference this year included Amelia Putnam, Alabama Youth in Government Lt. Governor Hannah Mouyal, Lewis Fitzpatrick, Kelley Jiang and Natalie Jones. The Alabama delegation is known as “the family of Alabama” because of their strong sense of collaboration and friendship.
This summer marked Putnam’s third year at CONA, which has inspired her to study international politics.
“It was great seeing people grow and get out of their comfort zones, because I realized that was what I had done as a delegate,” she said of Youth in Government.
At this year’s conference, she proposed restoring the right to vote to ex-felons, while Fitzpatrick’s proposal dealt with international Internet regulation.
Fitzpatrick won an award for statesmanship, and his proposal advanced to the highest round of discussion, General Assembly. He said that meeting hundreds of other students, all of whom were very talented and passionate, was a humbling experience.
“It really makes you believe in America when you’re in a room with 600 kids who are so passionate, bright and articulate,” he said. “You can see that a lot of them are going to be the next senators, presidents or heads of state, or at least I hope.”
To learn more about CONA, visit ymcacona.org.
