18by Vote: Claiming Your Voice

As we strive to activate young people to take action on issues that matter the most to them, we find ourselves asking questions like: “How do we showcase the power of young people?” “How can young people make a difference?” and “What tools can we provide young people with to take action?”

We know. These feel like some pretty big questions to answer. And in all honesty, we’re still working to figure it all out! One thing we know for certain is that young people, like YOU, are the future. We believe deeply in your power, and we’re centering our work in helping you build a collective of young people demystifying our democracy.

As an organization working to sustain civic engagement, check out our new democracy-based program, The Future is Now: Your Voice, Your Vote, as we continue to elevate voter registration and provide a safe, easy platform to do so. We’re on a mission to register over 30,000 new voters this election season–come join us!

In fact, we’re not the only organization doing this work! Check out one of our peer organizations, 18by Vote, which is doing AH-mazing work helping you claim your voice and become civically engaged!

So, what exactly is 18by Vote?

18by Vote is a youth-led organization–for real, every single member of their team is under the age of 25–which respects and values the wisdom, agency, and diversity of young people. They were founded in response to low youth voter turnout during the historic 2016 Election. Since then, they’ve activated hundreds of thousands of young people across the country to engage civically, and even launched one of the first Rapid Response Task Forces to take action and impact the Georgia Senate runoff election.

“18by Vote’s ultimate goal is to empower young people to be catalysts for civic action in their local communities – during and beyond high-profile election years. We aim to support young people in using their voices to express their own vision, and support them in taking actions to manifest that vision in the world: to vote, and to create the world that they want to live in,” says 18by Vote’s Executive Director, Ava Mateo.

“We actively invest in our youngest eligible voters – and those who are too young or not able to vote – by giving them the tools, resources, and compensation to orchestrate peer-to-peer voter registration and education outreach… We intend to create a culture of accessible civic engagement and activism so that young people across the country, regardless of their educational, socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, or political background, are able to take their vote and their voice into their own hands.”

What type of work do they do?

Our favorite 18by Vote program is their Civic Leadership Program. We think you’ll be inspired by this 20-week program because it provides leadership training, resources, and funding to 18 young people (all between the ages of 16 and 21) in six states – Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – to catalyze and support their voter registration and education efforts. The program includes a month-long leadership training where leaders engage in various civic actions like voter registration drives, canvassing events, localized text banking, and more!

Uhm, cool! Who can get involved?

The ideal candidate to become a Civic Leader is someone who is motivated, has an immense desire to be engaged, and wants to make a difference in their community. 18by Vote looks at two main criteria when choosing civic leaders: geographic diversity to ensure leaders are representative of their target states, and how responses to various questions geared toward experience and motivation to participate.

Sweet! What else?

In addition to their Civic Leadership Program, 18by Vote also offers a Civic Organizer Program, which is the second piece of their “On the Ground” work. This is where you come in, DoSomething members! In this program, their Civic Leaders recruit and train their peers to be Civic Organizers who run, with the support of their Civic Leader, hyper-localized voter registration and education activations. These activations vary from traditional canvassing methods, to pop-up voter registration/education at parks, protests, and marches, to community-building events that also include voter registration. We love seeing those civic muscles engaged! For those interested in applying to the Civic Organizer Program and living in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, or Florida, visit 18by Vote Jobs on July 25th when the application opens.

If 18by Vote knows anything, it’s that civic engagement must be sustained beyond high-profile election years! In 2023, they will be launching their Civic Hub Program, an iteration of their previous Civic Engagement Fellowship, where they will utilize the relationships they’ve built in 2022 to recruit youth to launch civic clubs in their schools and colleges.

We think 18by Vote is doing some incredible work, which is why we’re excited to partner! Take action today and claim your voice–and vote–this election season!