Bravi, everyone, bravi. And thank you, to the young people who registered to vote, cast their first ballots on November 6th, and helped to make this past election the best one in decades for first-time voters in Philadelphia.
When we launched Vote That Jawn in September, we issued the challenge to come up with the best ideas to get as many young Americans to register and then vote in the 2018 mid-term elections. Our hope, in accordance with the mission of our umbrella organization SafeKidsStories.com, was to amplify youth voice in this process.
We wanted to offer educational and informative youth-oriented and youth-created material that young people registering other young people could read, listen to, and share. We hoped to add support that would connect through the Philadelphia youth-vote cohort—as indeed their voting connects them—even though they are usually separated by schools, economic circumstance, ethnicity, voting programs and states, or even countries, of origin. We wanted to reward teams who had registered the largest number of new voters; who had been most creative in their strategies; and who had shown the most “grit” in finding and convincing people to register and vote.
On Wednesday, November 7th, the day after the election, we gathered in the Mayor’s Reception Room on the second floor in City Hall with the amazing Clef Club Junior Jazz ensemble to celebrate—and to hear moving stories of teams that had participated. Our three judges were David Brown, co-director of the Jawn and assistant Professor at Temple’s Klein College of Media and Communication; Peter Conn, Director of The Athenaeum of Philadelphia and professor emeritus at Penn; and Michelle Saahene, the Starbucks activist and life coach. They listened to reports from a few teams and from our student writers who had gone out the week before to talk to groups and bring back news of their efforts.
Here are the results: