YOI Registers Voters and Donates School Supplies on Youth Day in Brentwood

In celebration of International Youth Day, our Youth Organizing Institute 2022 Fellows were excited to be tabling at the Youth Day event planned by Long Island’s District 1 Youth Advisory Board. Two of our Fellows, Joshua Chan and Adriana Flores, are actually founding members of the Youth Advisory Board! Josh explained, “We decided to have a cultural unity event in Brentwood and gathered all of these organizations that take care of our community so people could know how they can get involved and who’s in their community.”

Our Fellows registered new voters in both English and Spanish, helped existing voters update their registration, and handed out school supplies to Brentwood students. “I’m very proud that YOI was part of this story,” Adriana said. “I was very nervous, but as more people came in it made me feel relieved that we allowed people to not worry about how [they’re] going to pay for [their] kid’s school supplies.”

Why is it important to celebrate Youth Day? “Because youth are the future of the world!” said YOI Fellow Sheilly Martinez-Jimenez. “With YOI, it was just also cool to be able to talk to the youth and let them know that we have current primaries coming up this month.”

YOI Fellow Mike Odnis added, “There’s a lack of representation in this community, and people need to know that they have a voice.”

We’d like to give a huge thank you to the Youth Advisory Board for their efforts and for allowing us to be part of such a special day! In total, they were able to give away over 600 backpacks to students and over 50 community organizations were in attendance.