Last Wednesday, Mar. 11th, Edina’s Youth for Social Justice Team (YSJE) had the opportunity to participate in Homeless Day on the Hill, sponsored by the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless. This event was aimed at lobbying for bills to help take care of the issue of homelessness in Minnesota. By participating in this event, members were able to learn about the issue of homelessness in their state, as well in voice their opinions to the state legislators.

The two bills the group focused on promoting included Homes for All and the MFIP Workplace Education Bill. “Spending the the day at the Capitol was a great experience, I learned so much about how the Capitol works and was glad to be able to help our state work towards improving the lives of the homeless,” said participating junior N’namdi Andersen.

The students started off their day meeting at a church downtown to gather pieces of information on these bills. Then, they headed over to the Capitol where they met with Senator Wiklund, Senator Franzen, and Representative Erhardt to talk about the bills.

“One of my favorite moments was when we got to meet Representative Erhardt,” said team member and senior Sahra Sabri. “We ended up being the first group to discuss with him, although it was a short amount of time, it was still awesome. His handshake was a lot more pleasant than we expected, very memorable.”

They also were able to sit in on a committee hearing at the end of the day. The hearing featured discussing the MFIP Workforce Education Bill. The hearing was a forum that allowed the students along with committee members to listen to the discussion of the bills strengths and weaknesses.

Afterwards and in their downtime, the students were allowed to explore the Capitol to learn how it operates.“My favorite thing that we did was exploring the Capitol with some of the YSJE members, they’re such a wonderful group of people!” said Andersen. This event is just a step in the beginning of YSJE’s efforts towards social justice, and they hope to take what they learned today to help encourage homelessness to be taken more seriously by their peers and community.