Accessible Transportation | Y4C Text Team | Friday November 04, 2011 4:51 pm EDT

To whom this may concern,

One year ago, the five organization that make up Y4C came together at URI campus to unanimously decide on our next big campaign idea. Our Youth Bill of Rights (located at y4cri.org **Mayor Angel Tavares, RIPTA CEO and many others have signed this bill of rights. You should too if you haven’t!**) was created by our steering committee with the help of all the youths in Providence affected by these issues.  We brought together the different issues that affect youth lives that needed to be heard and improved and brought it to the attention of the Mayoral Candidates at our Mayoral Candidates Forum. However, this was not a simple process. We had to focus on one issue out of all the issues that are stated in our Youth Bill of Rights. On October 30, 2010, we declared the Transportation for Education to be our central campaign. This was only the first step to a long arduous journey. Even so this year, we have accomplished so much.

The beginning of this year, we have been gathering all the information needed to be able to present a concrete idea. We’ve researched information on the requirements for obtaining bus passes, the people in charge of providing them, the price to purchase them and most important, personal stories about youths that aren’t able to receive bus passes and the effect it has on them. We have had meeting with Tom Brady, the former superintendent of Providence Public School Department in which we presented our case on how hard it was for youth to go to school. At “A Wake up Call to Action,” a meeting that the governor held at the Rhode Island Convention center, one of our youths, Jackie, was able to ask a question. It was like our lucky day because they were only answering about three. It was after Jackie’s informative question about our Transportation for Education campaign that we were greeted with applause and praise and a conversation with the CEO of RIPTA. A month later, he joined us for one of our meetings to hear the inside scoop on our campaign. Our meetings with him included presentations of our idea and plan. In response we hoped to hear their perspective and how they could help us in making our idea a reality.

 In the process of speaking and meeting with many important people, our media team recorded and took pictures of the significant events. Videos and photos of members of organization and helpful advocates at RIPTA board meetings, Free Minds Free People Convention and much more can be found online at y4cri.org as well. Facebook, twitter and blog sites have been a great help in bringing awareness to the public and community. Through Facebook pages, tweets and surveys, we have obtained a great amount of information that has benefitted us in learning more about the effects of no transportation.

Through our intense research and outreach, we have made connections with Ned Handy, Citizens Bank CEO who helped us come up with the idea of having companies advertise with RIPTA which in return would help us, Deborah Gist, Commissioner of Education, and Nikoli Onye, Adminstrator of Principals, who heard our issue and agreed that the side effects of not having a bus pass does harm a student’s academic attendance.

Recently, Y4C’s text team applied for youth venture in order to receive money to help jumpstart the campaign. They were successful in receiving the grant and began their first major outreach, the “flash mob,” a public demonstration launched at Providence Place Mall. Check out y4cri.org for a recap of how it all went down and the aftermath.

With all that flash mob stuff being said, we invite you to our jumpstart event for our campaign, transportation 4 education, on November 8^th at the salon on 57^th eddy street in downtown providence. Here we will be sharing data and going into debt of what we have researched over the past year. Please come out and support our campaign. The future of our education is in sight and we need transportation to help us get there!