Hampton youth planner Brianna Kralik wins statewide individual youth award

Jonathan McBride, Housing and Neighborhood Service Division Manager, opened the council's "Spotlight on Citizens" by announcing that Brianna Kralik had won the first-place award for individual youth effort at the Virginia Statewide Conference. McBride said Kralik is a senior at Bethel High School who started in the planning department as a junior and now serves as the senior youth planner, helping facilitate the youth commission and connect young people to the city's youth master plan. "Tonight is spotlight on citizens where we get to recognize, some of the great work our citizens are doing in the community," McBride said.

McBride highlighted Kralik's leadership on a transportation initiative that organized an HRT bus tour: "they actually organized a bus tour where they got, about 20 youth on a HRT bus and rode around the city for about 3 hours," he said, describing the tour as a hands-on way for youth to learn how to use public transit and speak from first-person experience. Mayor Wallace and council members invited Kralik and her mother forward for recognition and praised the city's long-standing youth involvement programs. The city encouraged youth and other residents to engage with ongoing youth-planning efforts and related events.