Students from these California campuses were selected in Fall 2020 to participate in California Campus Compact’s Community Engagement Student Fellowship – Youth Voice Youth Vote (YVYV) program, a 4-month initiative specifically designed to support student leaders advancing service, service-learning and community engagement at California Campus Compact member campuses throughout the state. Selected students focus their service on some aspect of voter engagement (ie, voter registration, voter education, youth-centered candidate forums) and youth voice ( finding out what young people care about; providing opportunities for young people to be heard on issues, etc.)
The YVYV fellow will work with his campus Office of Civic Engagement and student government leaders to educate and engage campus voters. Right now, he is focused specifically on encouraging census participation and voter registration, as well as helping students connect their areas of interest with issues that will be on the ballot in November. The YVYV fellow will launch a texting campaign to remind students to fill out the census and register to vote, will hold voter information discussions with various groups across campus, and connect students to various resources, talks, information sessions, and webinars through social media and outreach programs.
One of the YVYV fellows is working on a project called Undocuhustle: Election/Census/Politics which is two part series on civic engagement for undocumented students. The program includes guest speakers and community organizers that promote civic participation beyond voting for folks who cannot vote, such as Dreamers. The second YVYV fellow is working on a project called Call for Art: A Virtual Art Exhibition and Presentation. The Theme is “Protest” and her goal is to reach out to as many students/artists and have them submit artworks (Visual art, performance art, photography, poetry etc.) about the past and recent Police Brutality/Violence going on and how this effects them and their families. The hope is that artists will share their personal experience to these traumas and bring healing to these individuals and communities.
This project is focused on voter education so that students can be more informed when voting. To supplement active efforts to get young people registered, the YVYV fellow would like to compile a database of information, resources, and educational tools students can access to learn more about the contents of their ballots, what the voting process looks like, and who represents them in government so that they can be empowered to make bold, intentional choices during the election in November. It is imperative that young people everywhere realize the magnitude of their voice and the volume it can create. The YVYV fellow hopes that as a result of this project, she inspires LMU students to become more civically engaged and encourage them to stand up for what they believe in.
Two Community Engagement Student Fellows-Youth Voice, Youth Vote (YVYV) will organize, implement and support voter registration drives on the San Jose State campus, using printed and electronic resources provided by the national organization, Students Demand Action. In addition, the Fellows will work with the SJSU Departments of Political Science and Public Health, as well as the Students Demand Action Virtual Field Office to encourage and enable eligible college students to vote.
The YVYV Fellow at Sonoma State will research California ballot measures. The task is collecting data from over the past century on the rates at which proposed measures qualify for the ballot as well as the rate at which qualified measures pass. This research will help to gain a comprehensive understanding of trends in the California ballot measure process over the last century. This research, along with the work done by peers in Political Science at Sonoma State, will culminate in a public forum that will be streamed for the community on October 12, 2020.
One YVYV fellow will be spending her time developing social media partnerships across the UCLA and Los Angeles area in order to boost engagement and direct content to relevant viewers, with an emphasis on students in the Westwood area. She is responsible for managing and scheduling voter education presentations, and has already presented to hundreds of students on the importance of voting and what to expect on this year’s ballots. She is in charge of BruinsVote communications, student engagement, creative digital outreach, digital partnerships, class announcements and liaising with professors. The YVYV fellow is a part of every way in which the average student at UCLA might encounter BruinsVote. The second YVYV fellow will be working to increase student voter turnout at UCLA by helping students register and make plans to vote. She will work with the campaign team for CALPIRG’s New Voters Project to reach students in several ways. The two most important of these tactics being coalitions and grassroots actions such as phone banking and making announcements in classes. For the coalitions side of things, she is mobilizing the student power and student network of different student groups by having them participate in a competition to see which group can register the most number of people to vote. They are running the competition through voter educational events and training, and then inviting the members of the different student organizations to our general phone banks.
The University of San Francisco Youth Voice Youth Vote Fellows will be supporting the Leo T. McCarthy Center’s USFVotes initiative this Fall semester in anticipation of the upcoming 2020 Election by reducing barriers that might exist given COVID-19 and access to voting. The Fellows will be implementing an online platform and presence for virtual voter engagement given COVID-19 and make voting accessible to USF students on and off campus through various outreach and educational opportunities. Given that many states are moving to vote by mail opportunities, the students along with the USfVotes team will be supporting the USF community to have all of the information necessary to request mail in ballots, how to fill out the ballot, and how to vote safely in person and sharing this information in a virtual and online format. We will have a strong implementation plan by having key stakeholder conversations internally to make sure that this virtual online platform is accessible to students when signing up for classes, registering for the semester changing information, and informing all of the faculty and staff to embed voter engagement in every aspect of our online footprint for students and the greater USF community.