Civic engagement beyond the ballot<\/p>\n
Philadelphia organizations PA Youth Vote and Vote That Jawn are also finding creative ways to engage young people in civic life.<\/p>\n
Maya Izzard, a junior at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, became involved with PA Youth Vote in January after learning about the organization through her family. Although she found it hard to be as involved as she had hoped this year, Izzard found another outlet for civic engagement by starting conversations in her AP classes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are learning from each other and we have conversations because as teenagers, we all care about what\u2019s going on in our world, but we never really have the opportunity to talk about it,\u201d Izzard said. \u201cI feel like in certain classrooms where it\u2019s like teachers don\u2019t want to get into the nitty gritty of it all. But I feel like \u2026 especially when you talk to your friends, it\u2019s a very open and free space.\u201d<\/p>\n
PA Youth Vote has also held in-person meetings at CAPA, using programs such as civic arts to engage students.<\/p>\n
\u201cCAPA is very free. It\u2019s not an argument about anything, we are just kind of sharing our opinions and having a very comfortable [conversation],\u201d Izzard said.<\/p>\n
Izzard said art and conversations with her peers have given her another way to think about young people\u2019s role in civic life, including those who are not yet old enough to vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is important for us to really have that voice,\u201d she said. \u201cEven though we\u2019re not exactly there yet, we still get affected by the world. There\u2019s still things happening to me and the youth that I\u2019m going to have a voice [in] at some point, and that I need a voice in now to be able to prevent some things.\u201d<\/p>\n
PA Youth Vote ambassadors Vincent Nguyen and Jordan Savage have also worked to help young people take their first steps into civic engagement.<\/p>\n
\u201cCivic literacy isn\u2019t something that everyone is required to know,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cI have as much to learn as someone who isn\u2019t as involved as I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
Savage said his work focused on giving high school students a stepping stone into politics. The experience also required him to examine his own understanding of civic engagement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to really dig deep and understand myself, so I can help everybody else,\u201d Savage said.<\/p>\n
Other organizations are giving young people ways to engage outside of traditional political activities. Kayuga Jade deGuzman and Vismita Holavanahalli participated in spoken-word events organized by Vote That Jawn, using poetry to explore issues important to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was thinking about all the sacrifices that my grandparents made \u2026 coming here and being here, and how easy it is to forget that something as simple as voting was something that was really hard,\u201d deGuzman.<\/p>\n
For Holavanahalli, poetry became a way to address immigration as a community issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think writing the poem and being able to perform really showed me that I can make a change, and I can get involved in these ways,\u201d Holavanahalli said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to just be through voting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Civic engagement beyond the ballot Philadelphia organizations PA Youth Vote and Vote That Jawn are also finding creative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[25694,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-275148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-elections-2026","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275148","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=275148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}