Empowering Our Youth to Strengthen Our Democracy |
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Are you ready for 2022, the election year that will likely be the second most important one of our lives? It’s a daunting prospect, for sure! But here at Students for Justice, we are working hard to lay the groundwork to make a difference on a big scale. We are getting ready for our summer and fall internship sessions, when we plan to have a total of 120 college student interns working to get out the vote in key communities in the battleground states of NC, GA, and FL. We are excited and HOPEFUL. As a friend and supporter of Students for Justice, you should be too!
In this newsletter, we are highlighting the “secret sauce” of Students for Justice: our wonderful volunteer mentors. Students for Justice has two equal goals – getting out the vote and providing educational experiences for young people. Our mentors do a huge amount to allow us to achieve that second goal.
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Interns Talk About Their Mentors |
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When we founded Students for Justice in 2020 and had successfully recruited our first cohort of 63 interns, we realized that the two of us could not possibly supervise so many young people. We had the idea to recruit volunteers to fill the role and put out the word to our networks. We quickly had a group of wonderful volunteers, all older professionals with backgrounds in a variety of fields including law, politics, marketing, academia, corporate management, the arts, and health care. We assigned each intern to a mentor for weekly meetings, and a key part of our program was born.
Because we pair interns and mentors based in part on career interests, mentors are able to provide guidance to their interns that goes far beyond the internship’s challenges. Over four internship sessions, our interns have rated their relationship with their mentor as one of the best parts of the program. They say things like:
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"I absolutely adore the relationship I was able to create with my mentor. The consistency of our weekly meetings truly created a bond I will always cherish! Our weekly meetings felt more personal than professional, there was an abundance of laughs and knowledge to be shared."
"My mentor was a gem and I cannot wait to meet her in person soon and to continue staying in touch."
"Besides the super important work we collaborated on, I’d say the relationship I built with my mentor is the most important part of this internship for me, and I know that I will cherish that relationship for a long time."
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We are grateful for the dedication, wisdom, and support of our volunteer mentors!!
And speaking of support, our wonderful anonymous donor who put up $100,000 to match your donations has extended the deadline to January 31, and we are ALMOST there! We still need donations of about $20,000 more to take full advantage of the match. We know that many of you donated last month (THANK YOU!), but if you didn’t (or even if you did!), please consider making a donation now to help us meet our goal.
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With hope for our democracy, |
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Claire Ullman & Sandra Radoff
Co-Directors
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P.S. We know that some of you reading this will be interested in becoming mentors. We will be recruiting a limited number of new mentors for our fall and summer sessions, placing priority on volunteers who are people of color. If you are interested, please reach out to us at [email protected] and tell us a bit about yourself.
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Help us find opportunities for our former interns! |
We work hard to make Students for Justice a career stepping stone for our interns. One of the ways we do this is by sharing job and internship opportunities with our program alumni. If you know of an opportunity for current college students or recent graduates, in any field, please email us to let us know about it so we can share it with our intern community. You might even consider having one of our former interns work for you this summer! |
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Want to make a difference? |
The ongoing success of the internship program has been made possible by the COVID-friendly fundraising we’ve been doing, with more than 30 virtual house parties held since last spring. (Thank you to our AMAZING house party hosts for pulling their friends together on Zoom to learn more and help raise funds for these paid internships!) Click here to attend, host, or learn more about a house party.
Help us reach more people! Please forward this newsletter to everyone you know who might want to help young people save our democracy.
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PO Box 235, Ladysmith, VA 22501
Tax ID # 82-4589218
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