Inspiring student leaders

You have these students at Stonebridge High School in Ashburn helping some young folks find their voices and make a difference in their communities through their action projects, which is called It Takes a Village, and they're turning civic education into real-world action. And here to tell us all about it is Avitha, Alina, and Anya. Good to see all of you this morning. Thank you so much for coming in. Thank you for having us. So this kind of started as like a club project a long time ago when you were in middle school, and then it evolved over time. Tell me a little bit about that, what the idea was when you started and then where you are now. Yeah. So in seventh grade, Alina and I first founded a club in middle school. So we kind of just wanted to, you know, we had a goal of advocating and just supporting within our community. So we had a couple of friends and we made a club. We did supply drives and bake sales, but through that, we kind of noticed a more major gap. And it was that so many students had passion and they cared so much about local issues, but they had nowhere to like get started or even to get involved. So that's kind of what we wanted to like help and like fix. And we realized that like so many students have passion, but they don't know where to get started. So we were once in that same position as ourselves, starting a club. So we kind of wanted to bridge that gap and we eventually expanded into It Takes a Village. But this thing goes beyond that, right? Alina, I mean, this is like now you have global reach now, you're raising money, you're helping other people. Tell me a little bit about how this has evolved. Yeah, so now we have reached over 11,000 students. We've also raised almost $14,000 and helped over 250 action projects, and it's super important to us because we have this idea that's really central to us. It's our Youth Voices Workshop Series, and we not only teach kids about issues in their community, we teach them how to make change, and if you know anything about Loudoun County where we live, it's almost this economic development panacea because of all the data centers and everything that's been happening. It is policy after policy. And just to teach these kids how to make a change within that when life is moving like so fast around them, it's really important. Do you find that just because you're young, younger people will listen to you maybe more so than somebody else? Oh yeah, a hundred percent. Like I, if, if I'm like learning something from people, even just people my age or people a couple of years older than me, it feels a lot more personal because I know they've just recently been in the same situation as me. So I love hearing from people who are around my age and I want to do the same things they're doing. So that's kind of why we targeted kids who are in middle school or around the same age as us, because we know they definitely feel that same way. Yeah. So I mean, it's great. You've seen the evolution in the last couple of years since you started this together, but now you guys are going to evolve as well. You're going to move on to college soon. So what happens? Do you want to keep it going? Yeah, we for sure want to keep expanding. It takes a village. We already have like partner schools internationally and like India, where we support an under-resourced school with Montessori training. So we do want to continue expanding to more communities and even different states eventually, because honestly, there's so many kids who have the desire and passion to do what we do. They just need the resources to do it, and we feel we can provide that. And the last thing, to her point, how does it make you feel knowing now that it's not just your passion, that you were able to start this, but knowing that now you're able to reach other people maybe they take that they carry it forward it's so empowering honestly to see these young kids because obviously like like Anvita said we've been in that place before and we wanted to make change and like again Loudoun County it's such a place that like changes so much so we wanted to make that change and empowering these kids is like it's really important just like from anything like writing letters to local legislators or doing drives it's just it's empowering to see and last but certainly not least if folks want to find out more about it get involved, take part in it. What's the best way for them to do that? Yeah, the best way to reach out and get involved with us is through our Instagram or our website. And, you know, students, if they want to like come out to our Youth Voices workshops, we also have an ambassador program where they can come help us out a little bit. And then just people in the community can, if they'd like to partner with us and speak about their professional experiences at our Youth Voices workshop, those are the best ways to get involved. All right. And there you see the web address and the social media on your screen right now. Thank y'all for coming in today. congratulations and good luck to you in the future too thank you so much