Trailblazers: EMPOWERING YOUTH
Jessica Bowden, M.S.M. TEENS NOW TALK MAGAZINE By Feleshia Chandler | Photography by Adams Photography Story filed: August 30, 2021 Publication date: May 4, 2022
Mother and entrepreneur Jessica Bowden, M.S.M., started the magazine Teens Now Talk with the goal of giving youth a voice and space to be seen and heard. Little did she know, the magazine would flourish and she would become a trailblazer for youth, especially Black youth in Nova Scotia. “The whole concept started back in 2002,” said Bowden. “I went to a seminar as a guest speaker to talk to some of the youth at Cole Harbour High. There were 1000-plus students there.” Bowden said through that seminar she discovered that the youth at Cole Harbour High School had a lot to say but they just weren’t being listened to. “I wrote down all the things they were saying and came back about two weeks later to another open assembly.” Bowden said the students had originally suggested they write a book, but when she returned to the school she told them, a book wasn’t going to work. She was met with boos from the young crowd but she didn’t mind because she knew how they felt. “Once again, another adult let them down, right?” Bowden let them all boo. She allowed them to let out how they felt, but then she told the students at Cole Harbour that day that she wanted to make a magazine and she wanted them and other young people to write it. “So, who’s trying to stand up and help me with this magazine?” she asked them. “We had about 200 students stand up and even to this day we have about five that are still with us.” Bowden says the name came from a student during that first seminar who stood up and said, “We should call it TNT because our words are the bomb,” and Bowden decided to turn that into the name Teens Now Talk. Teens Now Talk was born. Bowden says before having the magazine published she knew little about the publishing industry but knew she had to make it work. “Not a publisher by trade, I didn’t know how to go through the editing process but here I am years later doing what I didn’t know how to do.” Since the magazine’s inception, Bowden says Teens Now Talk has had thousands of
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