At the end of July, high school students throughout the District came together for the first annual HISD Civic Ambassador Training. The brainchild of HISD’s Community Partnerships Department, the training offered students an opportunity to become their schools’ “Civic Ambassadors.” Over the three-day intensive program held at the University of Houston’s Downtown campus, students learned about the power of their votes, the importance of local elections, and the value of collaborating with their peers for the benefit of their community.
The Civic Ambassador Training is a collaborative effort between HISD and the Close Up Foundation, a nonprofit organization out of Washington, D.C. that is committed to encouraging youth to fully understand and participate in their civic responsibilities.
“The end goal is that they will take action and they will be change agents in their own schools and inspire other folks to become educated and informed citizens in our democracy,” said Community Partnerships Director John Meade.
The training’s programming included multiple discussion workshops where participants engaged with students from other schools, role-played simulations of different roles in local government, and heard a panel of local government officials, including Houston City Council member Mary Nan Huffman.
Jocelyn Jaime, a rising Junior at Milby High School, was relatively apathetic about voting when she started the training, but found herself shocked by statistics tracking low voter turnout for people in her age group. Like many, Jaime was under the impression that her single vote couldn’t make a difference.
“I know now that I do need to vote,” Jaime said. “I want my voice to be represented, I want my problems to be fixed, and I want my opinions to be heard by people in politics.”
The final learning day of the training culminated with the Student Civic Engagement Expo where participants were tasked to work in groups and develop and pitch action plans to increase civic engagement on their home campuses. Some groups focused on passing along the knowledge they’d gained during the training to their classmates, and others took aim at specific problems, proposing overhauling or reinstating student governments, improving graduation rates, or teaming up with local representatives to fix dangerous roads near their campuses.
“This experience has been so eye-opening,” said Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts rising senior Jazzy Dixon. “I love politics. I think it’s extremely interesting, and I also think it’s really cool to connect with the other schools. This experience has shown me that there are so many other schools in HISD and so many other people to meet who all want to make a difference. I think this program has done a lot to show young people that you can make a difference, even if you’re only 16, 17.”
This cohort of high school students was only a glimpse into a future led by civic-minded young people, according to Eduardo Elizondo, Coordinator with HISD Community Partnerships.
“We want them to share ideas, we want them to meet like-minded students, we want them to collaborate and use what they learn today so that we may see civic engagement events at different levels, on campus, in their divisions, in their feeder patterns,” Elizondo said. “We want them to be excited and energized, and I feel like we were successful in doing that.”