{"id":132714,"date":"2026-03-08T09:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T09:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/132714\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T09:21:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T09:21:07","slug":"young-philadelphians-are-turning-students-into-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/132714\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Philadelphians are turning students into voters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Informing young people about civic processes<\/p>\n

Samuel Gatheca, a senior at Temple University, says he often finds it difficult to find information about candidates, especially in local elections.\n<\/p>\n

One of the projects the 21-year-old is working on for PA Youth Vote is a voter guide, so people can make informed decisions.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI think voter guides are really important, especially before entering the booth,\u201d Gatheca said. \u201cBecause I want people to be prepared.\u201d
\n\"SamuelSamuel Gatheca poses at Temple University. (Courtesy of Samuel Gatheca)\n<\/p>\n

Gatheca also spends time working information tables in colleges, high schools and middle schools to inform other students about PA Youth Vote.\n <\/p>\n

Nguyen is working to bring young people into the civic process as well. He is building a nonpartisan public speaking training program to teach high school and middle school students about how they can participate in the democratic system.\n<\/p>\n

The project is set to include a series of workshops on how local government works, how to prepare public comments for meetings and how to deliver those remarks confidently.\n<\/p>\n

Nguyen said his goal is to get students to participate in something that means more to them than a line on their college application.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s to empower them,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cI\u2019ll know I\u2019ve succeeded if I see these students continuing to engage with local civics beyond the program.\u201d
\n\"PAPA Youth Vote buttons. (Courtesy of PA Youth Vote)\n<\/p>\n

Tapping into the community<\/p>\n

Lina Lin, a 19-year-old attending Drexel University, started Youth Voice Mosaic<\/a>, PA Youth Vote\u2019s digital magazine, in the summer of 2025. It is a platform for students across the state to share personal stories, highlight community issues and improve civic and media literacy.\n<\/p>\n

Lin said she wanted to create a community to amplify youth voices, where people come together through lived experiences with civic engagement.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cA community where people can engage with each other and that the youth feel represented and empowered to share their voices,\u201d Lin said.\n<\/p>\n

PA Youth Vote intern Raniyah Lawrence-Ashford, a sophomore at Lincoln University, is focused on in-person engagement with her school community in order to get fellow students involved in the electoral process.\n<\/p>\n

Lawrence-Ashford said she saw the positive effect of tabling at her school and thought it would be a compelling way to involve her peers in civics, at local and federal levels. She thinks that the effects of smaller elections are not as well known among her contemporaries.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like a lot of students at my campus know a lot about the presidential elections, but I really want to teach about the local and early elections as well and how they impact the community,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Informing young people about civic processes Samuel Gatheca, a senior at Temple University, says he often finds it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,724,61434],"class_list":["post-132714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-trump-impact","tag-youth-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}