Burlington, Mobile and Minneapolis: a final post from the last stop on Road Trip USA!

[Marco]

After nine amazing weeks, twenty-two cities in fourteen states, last week we completed the last three sessions of our final tour stop in Minneapolis. This week we will be following up with those students we registered to make sure they get to the polls.

We ended with three sessions at Patrick Henry High School in Minneapolis as strong as we began last August in Los Angeles. Students were engaged and inspired and really "got it" as we ran through the Vote 18 program. Our sessions were attended by Kids Voting Executive Director Roberta Worrell, who helped coordinate our tour stop, and Jodi Nelson, the Voting Outreach Coordinator from Sec of State Mark Ritchie's office.

We look forward to returning to Minnesota and developing a working relationship with both Secretary Ritchie's office and the Kids Voting chapter in our shared aims to engage and inspire more young people to become lifelong voters.

Southern Hospitality In Mobile, AL:

Just ahead of our final stop in Minneapolis we were in the South, in Mobile, Alabama, where we teamed up with our Vote 18 coordinator and League of Women Voter, Mary McGinnis. Like so many wonderful League of Women Voters around the country, Mary welcomed us into her home and her community. Only here, in Mobile, Mary brought to bear some of that famous Southern hospitality, including a proper southern breakfast buffet for our many guests hosted by Murphy High School's gifted culinary students.

Also, in a first for Vote 18, we visited with members of the Life-Line Community Church to run attendees through our program. Our participants ran the gamut from young to old, and our session there introduced us with a unique opportunity to reach a wide community audience that may not otherwise be exposed to Get Out the Vote efforts outside of presidential campaign years.

All told Mobile was a phenomenal success, as we were able to demonstrate our program to a large group of community leaders and educators including:

- Alabama State Senator Ben Brooks
- Alabama State Representative Joseph Mitchell
- Retiring District 3 Mobile School Board Commissioner Hazel Fournier as well as Commissioner-Elect Reginald Crenshaw.
(Just to name but a very few of the many prestigious guests in attendance.)

We were also pleased to meet Dr. Tom Hoffman, a Political Science Professor from Springhill College, and hope to inspire more of his students to become Vote 18 facilitators in the spring semester.

Vote 18 would like to especially thank the extra efforts of Nate Smith, the Mobile County Social Studies Coordinator, Reba Cunningham, the Social Studies Dept Head of Murphy High School and Ann Walsh, the Voter Services Chair for the League in Mobile, for making this successful tour stop possible.

The Leaves They are a Changin' (Burlington, VT):

And before any of this, last Monday I headed north and met up with Kyle Bergman, a member of our Board and our Vermont Chapter Leader. It was a great pleasure to stay in Kyle's charming home. Perched alongside a rippling brooke, his home provided an excellent opportunity to both decompress and catch up on work before we headed down to Burlington for our Wednesday sessions.

In Burlington we were joined by Ashley Wheeler, also known as Miss Vermont 2008. Dedicated to increasing the youth vote in Vermont, Ms. Wheeler has been traveling around the country this summer speaking to and registering new young voters. Ashley was impressed with the way our program connected with students and, following the election, we plan to work together in order to tackle the shared goal of getting more young men and women and vote in each and every election.


Next Steps:

Tonight we arrive at the end of our tour but the beginning of our journey. Now we begin the task of developing our chapters, connecting with community leaders, raising money and following up with those new young voters who want to get involved for the first time.


Four years ago we set out on a mission to connect with students to impart the importance of voting. Today Vote 18 is working to bring our simple yet powerful program that excites and engages young Americans not only about the value and power of their vote as their voice, but the crucial role their participation plays in the health of our democracy and their community.

Small we may yet be our tour has set in motion the start of something big; a strong and growing community that is committed to turning more of our young people into active, engaged citizens. Citizens who will not just register, but VOTE in each and every election. Of these, many will also volunteer in their communities, especially as we continue to develop partnerships who can then engage those students at the point of interest and turn excitement into action.

Our road trip has proved one inspiring success after another, many of which have been chronicled in the press, while teachers and students continue to praise our teaching method's ability to impart our fundamental lessons to notoriously apathetic students.

All of it culminates with our shared goal of getting our effective program in front of more young people. You are a viral part of this effort and a crucial key to our ongoing ability to achieve these goals.


Special Thanks:

Vote 18's Road Trip USA has connected with thousands of young people all over America. We'd like to extend a few extra thanks to those people and partners who have made this tour possible.


A very special thank you goes out to our Founding Donors, who believed in us from the beginning and continue to support our mission and cause.

Thanks too to the League of Women Voters a crucial partner to our success, as well as early corporate sponsors SRP in Phoenix, and Hampton Inn and Suites in cities around America.

Thanks to our amazing media team, High 5 Consulting in D.C. who has done such an amazing job getting us so much press during the tour.

Our success will also continue to be dependent on strategic partners like we have with COX Communications and Sec. of State Jan Brewer in Arizona, who empower us to reach even more Arizona students each and every semester.

And last but not least, thanks to the long list of friends who have helped us spread the word about our program. Partners like I Vote / You Vote, who have given us powerful tools to reach even more voters by capturing and building on the momentum we create in the classroom.


I also want to thank you, dear reader, for supporting Vote 18's mission. Be it through your direct financial contribution, your efforts to help us stage our events or simply your enthusiasm and belief in our program which has rallied us these last nine weeks.

There are many great things to come as we begin to build these initial chapters. To succeed, we need your help to build on the momentum of the tour.

In this effort please become a part of our first-ever, friend-to-friend Fundraising Drive.

Our goal is to raise $10,000 by the end of the month.

Please give what you can today and ask your friends to help us turn more young people into active, engage citizens. https://www.vote18.org/donate.php

Thanks in advance for your time, attention and support for our effective program.

Many more great things to come,

Marco Ceglie