National workshop, local impact
MRHS student selected for national workshop at RCMP Academy in Regina
A model MRHS student heads to RCMP Depot.
Elyias French is always looking for ways to make his community better.
This week, the Grade 12 Middleton student is in Regina at RCMP Depot to take part in youth leadership workshops where he hopes to gain insight into issues that tend to negatively affect communities, and come up with ways to implement ideas for positive change.
He won’t be alone. Students from coast to coast are attending.
Adam Burns, Annapolis District RCMP community programming officer, asked French to attend.
“They select kids from across Canada to go and they talk about issues within the communities,” he said. “I decided to take Elyias French. He’s a fantastic kid.”
French was a junior leader for the RCMP’S youth program Cops ‘n’ Kids this year, and Burns describes him as “smart and grounded.”
“On his sheet he had to list some major issues in his community, and he chose drugs, obviously a problem,” said Burns.
“But he chose lack of motivation as another one, which is pretty impressive for a kid who’s going into Grade 12 to be able to acknowledge himself.”
Identifying local issues
“So what happens is we go, we discuss the issues we have and then we try to plan out some way that we can work together to try to fix those issues in the area,” Burns said.
“We’ll talk about ways that we can fix all of that. It’s pretty impressive. It’s a full week. It’s a full ride for him.”
French is one of 20 students taking part.
“We come back and we set out plans to try to implement this,” Burns said. “I have to report to headquarters in Ottawa quarterly about what we’re doing, so we actually have to go into the schools and try to work this in. We’ll plan that all out there.”
They will be going to MRHS and other high schools to talk about the issues they’ve identified. Luckily, French doesn’t lack motivation.
“I’m going into Grade 12 at Middleton Regional High School,” he said. “I’m going to be a co-president along with Chris Johnson. We’ve been great pals for a while and I think it’s a great opportunity for both of us to step up and try and help out the school as best we can.”
Well-rounded student
French is active in the school through sports and music, besides being on student council. “I love getting involved with everything in the community,” he added. “I have a part-time job, which I’ve been working at just about three years now. I’m very involved in that. I love where I work.”
He wants more people to be active and contribute, both at school and within the community.
“I find in the school, especially, there’s always the exact same people who volunteer to lead, but there’s always just the bare minimum,” he said. “There’s never a large number of people who want to step up, who want to take charge, who want to get more involved. They want to follow rather than lead.”
He hopes his time in Regina is going to be long enough to come up with ideas that will turn into an action plan.
“I really do hope so. This is going to be a brand new experience for me. I’ve been to multiple leadership conferences for youth, and actually I’m going to another one in Edmonton, Alberta at the end of September as well – a youth leadership conference,” he said. “I’ve been to this type of thing but this one seems much more at a larger scale, which I’m very excited for, to see what it’s all about. But I do hope this one week will give me enough time to bring home new ideas, to talk to enough people to see what they’re doing and see if that would work for our situation.”
Optimism is key
French is an optimist and believes that optimism breeds optimism.
“I do believe that there are aspects of personalities that are contagious,” he said. “If you’re on a sports team and you get down because you missed a shot it’s going to carry on to the rest of the team. But if you say ‘sorry guys, I’ve got the next one’ and you make that one, obviously it’s going to pump everyone up. I do think that optimism, among many things, is contagious.”
That optimism is one component of motivation, something he hopes to stir up when he gets back.
“I’m very excited. Like I said, it’s a much larger scale than I’m used to,” he said. “Most times it’s just one school, or a couple of schools from one area, but this seems much larger.”