Reflective Essay: Doing Democracy Day

Words: 576
Pages: 3

In my AP United States Government class during my junior year of highschool, my teacher came to me asking me if I would take part in something that was called “Doing Democracy Day”, an event where government students from local schools gathered at the town hall to help learn the difficulty of problem solving politics. At this event, groups of randomly selected students were presented with a problem that the town faced, and the groups were then asked to come up with a solution to the problem and present it to the city council. At the start of “Doing Democracy Day”, every student is given a number in order to be assigned to a group, and every group is given a subject. My group was given homelessness. Upon finding my group, we got to work. After a couple of minutes of working with my partners, I realized I had a very different background from one of the two girls I was partnered with. I come from a stereotypical white, American family, raised in an english speaking household. The girl, Diana, who sat across from me, was bilingual, based on how she spoke in Spanish under her breath before addressing …show more content…
I spoke up right away sharing of my cousin who could not work due to mental illness. This was the only experience I had personally with homelessness. My perspective of homelessness was that it was mostly a result of mental illness. Quickly after I had spoken, Diana began to speak her mind. To her, homelessness was a big problem economically. People losing their jobs, people who are working paycheck to paycheck to paycheck living on thin ice, and minimum wage being too low. This made me realize how broad homelessness really was. It was a result of so many different problems, and you can just find one solution to it all. As Diana, my other partner (Olivia), and I opened each others eyes, we began to piece together a presentation that addressed as many aspects of homelessness that we could think