The lifechanging opportunity of TEDxYouth Events.
over the past two years
i’ve probably sent about a hundred
emails in the process of organizing tedx
events
and my introductions have always gone a
little bit like this
hi my name is stephanie farmer i’m a
senior at edmonds woodway high school
and i am the founder and organizer of
tedx youth at yoast park
the first ever tedx event for the edmond
school district
and then i would go on and on asking
someone for something
but long before that i was just a
student in the classroom at edmonds
woodway
and some of the most inspirational
material i’d ever seen projected onto
the large boards at the front of the
room
were talks from ted conferences
frequently
adults with incredible stories would
share their amazing ideas
but they lacked a relatability i didn’t
see myself represented in them
that’s when i discovered tedx youth
events all of the sudden
i saw people my age making a difference
and sharing their incredible ideas
and it inspired me to want to do the
same but this inspiration came at a
pretty difficult time
see i’ve been a ballet dancer since i
was three years old
spinning in circles falling down and
getting back up again
but in june 2017 everything changed
the doctors told me i had a rare
unexplainable brain tumor
an acoustic neuroma and i was paralyzed
by fear
in that moment i was convinced that all
of my dreams were dead
and that i had nothing for me anymore
i felt like i could never dance again
and
my story had suddenly become so much
more difficult to tell
two months later i checked into seattle
children’s hospital at 7
30 a.m the surgery was 13 hours
they peeled back my skin cut through my
nerves
removed the tumor and left nothing
behind but a 5
inch scar a tiny piece of mesh and no
hearing in my right ear
i didn’t understand what was happening
to me and i couldn’t
explain it without crying my story
became so much more complex
and i was so afraid of what the future
held for me
but all of that went away the second i
tried to understand my story
and i knew the only way i could do that
was by expressing it
so i started writing more and more but
most importantly my dancing had an all
new layer of meaning
it wasn’t just a conglomeration of
movements every anymore
every single step i took was a
justification for all of the pain i had
gone through
i had found a method of expression and a
way to tell my story
but i looked around and realized that a
lot of people my age didn’t have that
same blessing
so many teens felt silenced and
disrespected by the people in their
community
i saw people my age pleading the city
council to let their voices be heard
they were venting in feminism club and
being silenced in english class
and i couldn’t let this continue i wrote
an article for the school newspaper
about our dance team
and a member came up to me crying
explaining how meaningful it was to see
her story being told
she reminded me of how i felt right
after my surgery
isolated and silenced and i knew i
couldn’t let that continue
so i passed teens like her the
microphone
tedx youth at yoast park opened up
speaker applications to every single
high schooler in the edmond school
district
and we ended up with eight incredible
speakers who shared their stories and
realized that they deserved to be heard
like emma at 17 she was diagnosed with
stage
four hodgkin’s lymphoma a very rare kind
of lung cancer
and she told the story about what it
felt like to be completely disrespected
by her doctors
but speaking at a tedx youth event made
her realize that her story was worth
telling
and empowered her to make a difference
a lot of kids my age have complained
about how boring our town is
how little we have to do with our
suburban lives
and i’ll admit i used to do the same
thing i grew up in downtown seattle
going to museums every weekend
so when we moved to edmonds i was pretty
convinced there was nothing for me there
until i started listening to the stories
of the people around me
all of a sudden i realized that there
were kids my age in my
area struggling but overcoming their
obstacles and creating an impact
like jared he grew up with
autism and doctors told him that he
would never even be able to walk
but now he’s a thriving junior at
linwood high school and defied all of
the odds
he wanted to tell his story and prove to
everyone
that we all are superheroes in our own
way and we all have unique talents
my complaining classmates needed to see
this they needed to see kids their age
making a difference in their communities
tedx youth speakers are teens who have
checked off step one
they prove that we don’t have to wait
until we’re older to make a difference
teams can start making change right now
the reason why tedx youth at yoast park
exists
is the same reason why every school in
the world needs a tedx event
they amplify the voices of young people
and they encourage other people to make
a difference
now i am not saying that organizing is
easy
remember how i started by explaining
that i had sent 100 emails
i can guarantee you that at least a
quarter of them were dedicated to trying
to figure out what to name the event
i asked for tedx admins and they said no
i asked for tedx admin
schools and they said no admin school
district edmonds teens edmonds youth
no no no i’m 17
and organizing this event gave me gray
hairs
but all of that was worth it the second
i walked onto the infamous red rug to
introduce the event
though these voices of these teenagers
deserve to be heard
and every hour i spent building by hand
an
x for our stage was worth it when i
started to hear their stories on stage
every single teen in the whole world
has an incredible story that deserves to
be heard
and tedx youth talks are an opportunity
for those ideas and prove that teens
have ideas worth spreading thank you
you