Park’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance took a field trip on March 2 to Outfront Minnesota’s annual Youth Summit; a gathering designed to bring together students from all backgrounds and identities to talk about equality issues with legislators and other groups.

Sophomore Elise Bargman helped emcee this year’s summit and also organized the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) field trip. She said the point of the summit was to bring together youth and inspire them to make positive changes in their own lives.

“The goal of the youth summit is to inform, unite, and empower youth,” Bargman said. “Together we make our schools and communities the way we want them to be.”

Bargman said she decided to bring the GSA because she wanted others to have the same good experience she did at the 2014 summit.

“It was the highlight of my freshman year and I want kids from our school to experience that too,” Bargman said.

Kyle Sweeney, the adviser to the GSA, said she accompanied the group to the summit because members of the club wanted to go after hearing Bargman’s stories about the previous year.

“It’s an event that a lot of GSAs go to all around the state so we got the information and checked it out. People wanted to go,” Sweeney said.

Senior Kalaia Bouley said she went to the summit because she thought it would be an opportunity to learn about equality issues and hear other perspectives.

“I thought (the summit) would be a great opportunity to learn about social justice in the LGBTQ community and hear people speak up about other issues, as well as seeing multiple communities come together for a common purpose,” Bouley said.

The summit was held at the Wellstone Center and the Capitol, with opportunities for students to speak with their legislators about important issues, participate in group conversations and interact with other students in a safe space.

Sweeney said she enjoyed seeing her students being able to speak with people at the Capitol about issues of importance to them.

“It was really up to the students to talk to the legislators and say what they wanted to say, so that was really empowering for them,” Sweeney said. “I got to see the students feel empowered in actually making a difference and speaking their mind about what they want in their schools.”

Bouley said she loved the opportunities the summit gave her to talk to other students and legislators about important issues.

“(I was) able to tell my story to the Senate and speak about the need for funding in our schools for social workers and other various support systems,” Bouley said.

Bargman said the most impactful part of the day was when students were sharing their personal stories with the group after the planned programming had ended.

“Both of the large group sessions I helped emcee for ended early, so we had to fill the time somehow. We decided to let kids come up and tell their stories,” Bargman said. “I cried like a baby. They were so powerful and heart wrenching.”

To learn more about Outfront Minnesota and what they do during the rest of the year, visit outfront.org.