Getting Involved

1) I’m writing to reply to the article about teenagers in yesterday’s newspaper. As a teenager, I think the article was unfair because it gave the impression that all teenagers are lazy and hanging around the streets to cause trouble. However, a recent survey shows that people between the ages of 16 and 24 are more likely to be the victims of street crime than older people. Sadly, people ignore these surveys and newspapers write about teenagers who behave badly and don’t care about other people. Not all teenagers are like that. I’m not saying that me and my friends are angels, but we aren’t troublemakers.

2) My friends and I have been going to a youth club for more than 3 years. We enjoy ourselves, but we also do things to help the local community. For example, last year we organized a concert for young kids in our neighbourhood and half of them came. We enjoyed it a lot.

3) This year, a group of us have been volunteers on a community project. We interviewed young people about local problems like crime and asked for suggestions. Last week, we had a meeting with some local councillors and they will carry out the ideas that we gave them. They are planning to start up a website for young people and build a library so that the students can benefit from it.

4) We do a lot of things at school to raise funds for people who are in need. Last term we raised $1000 for a charity organization. We sold food, handmade accessories, and books to raise money.

5) To sum up, please don’t judge all teenagers just because of some bad behaviour by a few of us. That would be a huge mistake.

Yours sincerely,

Meredith Jenkins