From the president
Caroline Leonard is a junior undergraduate at the University of Mississippi studying international studies and Arabic language. She is a student leader active in voter education, voter rights, and sustainability efforts. For the last two years, Leonard has been engaged with the Andrew Goodman Foundation starting as a Vote Everywhere Ambassador and now serving as the Campus Team Lead for the University of Mississippi. In this role, she promoted non-partisan efforts to collaborate with community partners and campus groups to plan voter registration drives, information meetings, and educational demonstrations about voting and voting history. In addition, Leonard is using the knowledge gained in her engineering minor to support sustainability and environmental efforts on our campus and beyond. She aims to use her experiences and interests to collaborate with others to solve problems facing our communities, such as equity, environmental issues, public health issues, poverty, and literacy. Leonard is currently working on developing an initiative to educate high school students about ways to use the legislative process to solve problems plaguing our communities.
Personal Statement
The first experience I had with researching tangible solutions for community projects was in high school when I drafted a mock legislative proposal to improve the Mississippi Farm to School Program. The process revolved around researching ways to improve nutrition in schools; finding an answer, the farm-to-school program; and then being disappointed at the lack of implementation of such initiatives in Mississippi. This process would repeat many times in my life, but it has only strengthened my desire to enact change in my home community and the country. Right now, I work on campus supporting voting through non-partisan efforts. Solving barriers to voting and low voter turnout is extremely important to all issues across the country, as it provides a direct way for citizens to tell policymakers what issues are important to them. Furthermore, voting is a right that unites various communities working to solve different problems and highlights the ongoing need to address issues of equity and discrimination. Civic education emphasizing civil rights history is important to encouraging change-makers from every background. I am developing a program for high school students in Mississippi to access civic education focused on problem-solving and the legislative process to encourage engagement early on.