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In May 2013, current junior Sareana Kimia founded the organization Youth for National Change. The organization was composed of people that she had met through school as well as people that she had met randomly around the D.C. area. She founded this organization, which tries to give youth under the age of 25 a voice in the government.
“I was a part of a bunch of different organizations, some of them claimed to be nonpartisan, others claimed that they were doing some work and they weren’t, and I wasn’t necessarily inspired by the leadership… I also felt like it was very regional-centric and [there was] not enough exposure to what the nation is looking like,” Kimia said.
Kimia decided to do something about this. She gathered a group of people into the same room and asked them what values people under the age of 25 cared about. The list of values that they came up with became the core values of her new organization, Youth for National Change (YNC).
“We moved forward to make sure that we had voices in issues that [were concerning] us,” she said.
At the moment, YNC is aiming to expand the number of state chapters that they have, and thus increase their grassroots support. The organization also hopes to get its initiatives, which include providing the Student Member of the Board (SMOB) with full voting rights and making sure that there is a jury present in every juvenile trial case, passed at both the national and state levels, and ultimately establish more justice for young people.
Senior Ryan Um is the chair of YNC and has been with the organization since the beginning. Um was originally a secretary but was elevated to vice chair and then to chair.
Um is presently helping to organize a conference with students to discuss fundraising events and different kinds of issues for youth, and also to look at each state and see what each is doing to help give youth a voice in the government. Um is hoping that the conference will be around the same time as spring break.
“A lot of us wanted to have that say in what was going on in government but didn’t have a shot at an outlet,” Kimia added.
Um said that the hardest part of running the organization is that people don’t always take them seriously.
“There are some adults…who just don’t believe that we’re capable of changing their minds [but that’s] wrong,” said Um.
For Kimia, when they can’t unify on an issue it can be a little frustrating.
“We like to think of ourselves like we’re 10 times better than Congress, but we still have our conflicts too,” said Kimia.
However, there isn’t anything that she doesn’t love about it.
“I think that the best part about it is seeing so many people from so many diverse backgrounds and [from] so many different views coming together on an issue and unifying their voice and [then] being so inspired to go fight for what they think is right,” Kimia said.
