Manhattan High’s Civic Engagement Club has started the year off right with an important discussion about ways they can help the community. 

“It was a community conversation between some students from the high school and community organizations,” senior Michael Hwang, treasurer of the Civic Engagement Club, said. “We had many community organizations show up, such as the manager of the Flint Hills Breadbasket and the Police Department.”

The meeting consisted of crucial discussion on many important topics that the Manhattan community deals with on a day-to-day basis.

“We talked about food insecurity, and so since Riley County is one of the most insecure populations in Kansas, we wanted to shed light on the topic and bring a bunch of community organizations together so we can talk about more feasible actions plans for our community to reduce the rate of food insecurity,” junior Raisa Hossain, co-president, said. 

With every meeting, the members try to reach attainable solutions to better their community.

“Our goal was to soon reach a common ground, so we tried to get everyone together and find the most critical idea that everyone wants to achieve,” Hwang said. “Then using that discussion, we decide what we think is achievable and set five goals for the Riley County department.”

Their first discussion of the year took place on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but they plan on having many more discussions as the year continues. 

“We will be implementing our action plan about food insecurity since we came up with action plans at our conversation so we will be implementing that into the community and we will be presenting at the city commission meeting,” Hossain said. “We are also discussing bringing in state senators and going to the capitol to visit them. We were supposed to have [state senator] Usha Reddi come and talk to us, but she was sick, so we are rescheduling that.”

The team has one big plan they will focus on in 2024.

“We have one big project called Citizen’s Jury where we basically ask important members of our Manhattan High school community to come in and talk about important issues such as chronic absenteeism as well as host many more conversations about food insecurity and a lot of different leadership trainings,” Hossain said. “We have a lot going on so stay tuned.”

If you are interested in being involved in a future discussion, reach out to co-presidents Hossain and junior Advith Natarajan.