Note: This is a guest blog post from a group of Union College students who worked with Appleseed staff this fall to create a project designed to encourage Nebraska college students to vote in this election.
This semester the Practice III class at Union College hosted a service learning project where students had the opportunity to work alongside an organization. Our group had the privilege of partnering with Nebraska Appleseed. The goal was to empower and encourage young people to vote this coming election, November 4, 2014.
A plan was created that would incorporate social media as the way of spreading the word. We reached out and asked all of the universities and colleges in Nebraska to film short clips on reasons why the students on their campuses thought it was important to vote. The goal was to get as many reasons as we could and compile a video from the responses we received.
Watch the video “Nebraska Students Vote”
Sharyn
I have loved working with Nebraska Appleseed and their team of professionals! I have gained a better understanding of the steps it takes in starting with an idea and seeing it through multiple stages to completion. We were able to work with different leaders of departments to pull the whole project together and I appreciated learning from them! It was great to work on this project because it was a topic I was passionate about. Our generation is one of opinions and ideas and voting is one way of expressing the direction we would like our state and country to go.
We want to encourage young people to be a part of the conversation and their opinions can be seen through their active participation in voting for the leaders of our state and potential policy changes.
Alex
Doing the video was a great experience because I got to see a lot of young people, which just shows the importance of this video! Voting is something we should all participate in because we can change the future. That is what we wanted to show and from my experience, I feel as if this has happened.
Susy
I was drawn to this project because it focused on motivating young voters to be involved in their local government. Being born in Cuba, I didn’t experience the freedom of participating and having a voice in policy until getting my United States citizenship. Every time I vote I feel honored and privileged to have this right. As much as it is an honor, voting is also a duty. We are responsible for who we allow to run our state and federal government.
Unfortunately, a big group of voters missing from the polls are college students. Getting involved in this project was exciting because it gave us the opportunity to motivate other young people to vote. We learned a lot through working as a team, collaborating with other colleges and universities in Nebraska, and through partnering with Nebraska Appleseed. I hope our project will motivate young voters to be active during this election and to continue being involved in the future.
Shawna
The first time I saw the representative for Nebraska Appleseed I knew I was interested in whatever she had to say. I had previously known of Appleseed and the many interesting activities and policies that they are involved in. Our project was to motivate students and young people to vote this November 4th. It was an interesting and fun project to be involved in! My favorite part was hearing the variety of different reasons that people around Nebraska voted. Some were deep heartfelt reasons on why voting was truly important to them while others had questions and were new to the process. I am interested to continue exploring reasons that young people vote and do not vote.
Thank you Nebraska Appleseed for this wonderful project and endless opportunity to serve our local people and our communities in Nebraska! We have had a really positive experience working with Nebraska Appleseed and are grateful for the new knowledge we have gained.
We hope our project does not go in vain and that more young people will get out and vote this election, because our opinions matter! See you at the polls, November 4! Don’t forget to post your picture with your sticker to our Facebook page Nebraska Students Vote!