I had the best experience as a Prospect Park Youth Advocate, working with Transportation Alternatives. I thought it would be a great idea to get involved with the campaign and have a safe, healthy, car-free park. At the beginning of this summer, I thought this issue interested many citizens, but after an entire summer of speaking with the users of Prospect Park, I know now totally that the people of Brooklyn, and most especially young people like myself, want a car-free park. But I was thrilled that out of so many applicants, four interns were chosen and I was one of them. This campaign seemed extremely interesting; it worked from the bottom-up, from the youth to the adults to the politicians, in a way different from all of the other politics I have know, and it was totally run by my very motivated fellow interns. We worked very hard to get done our jobs very well. The best part was this was all done by us! We had an awesome supervisor who helped and guided us to the right direction and we accomplished something -- four teens absolutely did something huge.

This summer as a Youth Advocate has been an amazing new learning experience. First and foremost, I learned the importance of leadership. Nothing could have happened without someone taking charge, helping us make plans, and insisting we set goals. Jessie, our irreplaceable supervisor and friend, has been a pivotal part of our developing a campaign. She taught us the hardships of making change, but also the nobility of doing work to better the community. She put together the details of our campaign activities for a car-free Prospect Park while allowing us to make decisions based on what we think would work.

After Tropical Storm Hanna's torrential storms flooded the streets of Brooklyn and shattered one too many branches on Saturday, the sun rose and lit up the skies for T.A.'s annual NYC Century BiKe Tour -- an exciting hundred-mile bike tour across NYC's five boroughs. Farah, Oswald, and I sprung into action early in the morning so that we could catch every moment of this great event.