City Hall hosts high school students to boost youth civic engagement

Published 1:30 am Thursday, April 30, 2026

On April 28, the City of Bainbridge Island hosted high school students from Bainbridge High School, Hyla School, and Eagle Harbor High School at City Hall in efforts to bolster youth civic engagement.

“The council hears mostly from adults in the community. They tend to be older. They tend to be kind of the same folks who come and share their thoughts, and the council has a relationship with them. It just seemed like the youth voice was missing. And so in my capacity as equity and inclusion manager, that was sort of an underrepresented voice I was tasked with bringing to the forefront,” COBI equity and inclusion manager Anshu Wahi said.

Council previously received a presentation about youth engagement and approved a plan for Wahi to organize a youth engagement event. Ahead of the event, Wahi said she engaged with students at three high schools to gather initial feedback on ideas. “As we were thinking about what kind of programming we could create for young people, for engagement with local government, it just seemed like a best practice would be to ask the youth themselves what kind of programming would they be most interested in? What would they want to learn about? How would they want to contribute before formalizing anything?” she said.

Wahi said she hopes students learn more about local government and remain engaged, adding, “they are a very lively part of the island whose voices need to be heard more and taken seriously if we’re trying to kind of make this community diverse, including age, to provide opportunities for teenagers and young people,” she said.