Tara Davis, BAIn reflecting upon my peer learning pod's Community Action Project, "YOVO: You Only Vote Once *per election", I realize how youth engage once they have access to creative, adaptive, and technologically-innovative voting processes and learning resources. By associating participation in the federal election with the phenomenal Internet social media campaign, "YOLO: You Only Live Once", youth are motivated to participate. The YOVO outreach campaign provides students with an easy-to-use website (http://yovo.weebly.com/), which facilitates the voting process while connecting young voters to our CAP team. Our campaign focuses on informing youth of their potential to make a difference as opposed to constantly reminding them that their demographic rarely bothers to vote. Understanding the diversity inherent in a university population, we made our learning resources accessible to students by volunteering our time to answer student's questions, hand out brochures, and assist students in online voter registration on campus.
Guided by Vancouver Island University's Cross Curricular Outcome, "multiversity", the website is committed to equity, inclusion, and social justice by providing non-biased party platforms on the key issues of the up and coming election such as youth employment, climate change, indigenous rights, and health care. Recognizing our role as educators and global citizens within ourselves, our classroom, our education system, our community, and the world around us; our CAP team worked collaboratively to research the issues, interview the candidates, and to present the information to the greater school community in a professional, collegial manner. We accomplished our goals within our team-managed timeframe through the active participation of VIU students and the help of our professor mentors, Sharon Wahl and John Fipps. On a personal note, the YOVO Community Action Project was a way for me to exercise my democratic rights and responsibilities, one of the key performance standards for social responsibility outlined in B.C.'s 2001 curriculum. I also had the chance to apply B.C.'s new curriculum's social responsibility competency by empathizing with others and appreciating their diverse perspectives, by creating and maintaining healthy relationships, and by making a positive contribution in my community. |