Working to prepare students for future political leadership through political awareness and experience on the state level, the Youth and Government club will be competing in the District Conference Saturday in Dallas.

“Youth and Government is an organization through the YMCA of Dallas where students get to practice imitating our legislative branch,” club sponsor Kaitlyn Little said. “They can be members of the House of Representatives or the Senate.”

For the past few weeks, Youth and Government has been working on writing legislative bills to compete with other students’ to be “passed” at districts. The bills must bring to light state and federal issues without expressing personal opinions.

“They create their own bills and have to debate them in front of other student senators or representatives,” Little said. “Bill topics can generally be anything they want, they just have to be able to defend it and be prepared to speak in favor of that topic.”

Like many school based competitions, the district conference is the first step towards a bigger competition.

“If one of our team members won districts, that would mean we would all be able to attend the state competition,” junior Mallory Reed said. “Although not all of us would be competing, we would be able to go and support.”

Also on Saturday, Model United Nations, a club similar to Youth and Government, will be attending a conference in Garland. Model UN is a club that mimics the UN committees by providing possible solutions for pressing issues among nations.

“Model UN is a way for us to become more informed about the issues our nation has, and allows us to create solutions we think would fit best from a student’s perspective,” junior Noah Perry said.

At the conference, the club will be competing against high schools around the area to address issues such as economics, human rights, and peacekeeping.

“I’m excited for the conference,” Perry said. “It will give us the opportunity to be a voice and learn how to further helpful skills such as compromise.”