Giving youth a voice

Nathan Meeks wants to be a voice for the children of Florida.
The Citrus High School freshman, 4-H and FFA member, is getting a first-hand look at state government from inside the Capitol, where he plans making that voice heard for years to come.
 

Matthew Beck

Nathan Meeks finishes cleaning the area where his swine Champy lives on the Citrus High School FFA grounds. Meeks will enter his pig into the Citrus County Fair in March.

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Special to the Chronicle

Citrus High School freshman Nathan Meeks recently spent a week in Tallahassee, where he had a chance to visit Gov. Rick Scott.

The 14-year-old student has been actively participating in 4-H and FFA for most of his life, according to his mother, Cara.
 

“He has done a lot with 4-H and FFA,” she said. “He started in 4-H as a Clover when he was 8, and now he’s also in FFA in high school,” she said Friday afternoon. “He does a lot of community service with nonprofit agencies and he does a lot of community service with 4-H and FFA.”
 

That selfless attitude and strong work ethic that calls him to volunteer to help others has taken the teen from Citrus County all the way to the Capitol in Tallahassee.
 

Following a nomination by the Citrus County Communities Alliance’s Children’s Week Committee, Meeks was chosen as one of 12 youth in the state to sit on the 2012 Children’s Week, Florida Youth Commission on the Cabinet. He will remain on the commission for a term of one year.
 

The appointment will allow the teen to address issues with the governing body.
 

He recently returned from the Capitol following the “Teen Only Town Hall,” where he concentrated on early childhood education, a subject he is interested in pursuing in the future, he said.
 

He is taking an early childhood education class at Citrus High School to better equip himself to help the youths of Florida.
 

His mother described the youth commission.
 

“This council is made up of representatives of head agencies in state government. Agencies including the Department of Juvenile Justice, Department of Children and Families and Department of Education are represented. There are Senators and Representatives on appointment by the governor, too” she said. “Nathan is one of 12 youths selected to sit on the council out of hundreds of youths nominated statewide. The council’s job is to make rules and to come up with creative ideas to help children and youths throughout the state of Florida. All these members on the cabinet are collaborating to help youths and to better our system.”
 

She said the program, in its second year, gives outspoken youths a chance to impact the world around them, something her son is equipped to do.
 

“I’ve always known he’s a very good speaker and he voices his mind. He’s truthful, honest. We’ve really tried to raise him to be a person of integrity and he’s a real go-getter,” she said.
 

As his mother proudly spoke of his accomplishments, the teen quietly went to work washing his swine’s stall free from soil and debris. He plans on entering Champy into the Citrus County Fair next month.
He said his Claybusters 4-H Club and Citrus FFA group, as well as the commission he sits on in Tallahassee, are important to him because it affords him a platform where he and other peers can shape the world around them.
 

“I hope that we can make changes to where children get to talk more, more than people let them,” he said. “We want to be heard. We should be able to talk, where people will listen, about what goes on in school and what goes on in our state, about us,” he said.
 

While at the Capitol, the teen was invited to serve as a page in the House of Representatives for Rep Jimmie T. Smith in the Page and Messenger Program, something Meeks said was especially enjoyable. He said soon he would become an intern for Rep. Smith and that experience will serve him well as time passes. His plans for a future in politics in Tallahassee following high school and college are definitely a possibility.
 

Citrus High School FFA adviser Randy Kegler has seen his share of FFA members over the course of 29 years at the school. It doesn’t take him long to express his feeling about his freshman FFA member.
“He’s a great kid,” he said. “He’s an example of a student who can speak for the children. He’ll be taken seriously because he’s mature and he’s been given leadership opportunities through 4-H and FFA. To me, its an advantage for our 4-H and FFA community to have a youth like Nathan speak for us and take issues forward. I’m blessed as an FFA adviser.”