A grassroots online campaign for Prop 15

This November, California voters will have the opportunity to decide on Proposition 15, also known as the Schools and Communities First Initiative, which will reclaim $12 billion per year for schools and local community resources. A coalition of people-powered organizations across California is fighting for Prop 15 to bring resources and power back to our schools and communities.

We challenged the AAMPLIFY cohort of 2020 to campaign and educate their network around Prop 15, which was extremely challenging given the global pandemic. Our summer program was completely virtual this year, but the students rose to the challenge as you’ll see below!

For the official account regarding Prop 15, check out: @schools1stca

What the students did

Our students worked in small groups of 4-5 over the course of simply a few weeks, while balancing the start of the Fall semester to advocate for Prop15. All our students made up their own small group name. Note many of them have to do with food! Here we are going to share the corresponding links to each student group’s project, which was hosted on Instagram, or a website. We also shared with our readers a few snippets from their last day presentation and some “lessons learned”.

1. Sweet Tooth Small Group: (Iris Li, Aidan Liang, Annie Kim, Sri Anbarasan, Jeshlyn Prasadi) Instagram link: @aamplifyforprop15 “We chose students and their families as our main target audience… We wanted to educate our target audience about what Proposition 15 would achieve and how they could support it.” Lessons learned: “Regardless of our age, we have the capability of spreading awareness. I believe this itself was a win.”
2. Salty Snaccs Small Group: (Adrianna Zhang, Fiona Vuong, Nancy Deng, Arielle Mendoza, Grace Nguyen) Instagram link: @prop15awareness - Infographic “Worked with teachers for interviews and got their endorsement for Prop15, while getting the attention from our peers and answering questions they had” Lessons learned: “Constantly talking with our family group on progress and providing ideas and advice to each other.”
3. Rocking Broccolis Small Group: (Taylor Chin, Louis Ng, Brian Wen, Katelyn Chan, Sonya Nguyen) Instagram link: @yesprop15 “Our account was shared multiple times, 100s of views… with views from many different schools” Lessons learned: “We learned ways of spreading awareness for a cause that we support.”
4. Berry Loops Small Group: (Claire Tao, Taylor Matoba, Ariana Lacson, Jessica Lin) Website link: https://prop15awareness.weebly.com/ “We know that not everyone has social media, so when we want to reach older voters, we figured a website was the best way to go.” Lessons learned: “Collaborating on a real-world project even in the midst of COVID”
5. Hydration Homies Small Group: (Abby Lam, Eason Tang, Shilpa Suresh, Bethany Yeung, Caitlyn Wong) Instagram link: @studentsforprop15 “We reached over 600 views on one reel, and 272 interactions over the course of a month. We had a lot of strangers that ended up following us, which was a big success.” Lessons learned: “We gained an understanding of Prop15 and how it could affect small businesses, and we also realized as students we could have an affect.”
6. Cheese Small Group: (Kathleen Wong, Kolby Tram, Charlene Chein, Jesse Huang, Kaya Bui) Instagram Link: @students4prop15

“Spreading awareness on Proposition 15, educating our friends and family and sharing this topic on Instagram. We chose to utilize artistic elements to provide facts and statistics because it would be able to capture the eye.” Lessons learned: “This was the first time any of us took on an advocacy project and it was a great opportunity to learn how to advocate for a cause.”

See here for an interview of teachers that the Salty Snaccs group conducted all virtually! They all support Prop 15. It was amazing to see teachers from all over the Bay Area speak out about this important proposition.

The Summer 2020 Program and What Changed

Like the rest of the world, AAMPLIFY was hit with the uncertainty that a global pandemic brought on. We were forced to adapt our annual summer program in a number of ways: i) shifting fully online to Zoom sessions and ii) adapting the current curriculum to occur over the course of 10 weekends. Obviously any educational experience is preferred to be in person, but we found that adapting to Zoom was easier then we anticipated. Students were understanding of the situation and any technical difficulties. We were able to overcome any space limitations by expanding our student pool to ~30 students this year, more than doubling some of our previous year’s cohort sizes. Adapting the curriculum was streamlined with the help of everyone on the AAMPLIFY team. We opted in for PowerPoint presentations and breakout rooms to help facilitate participation. We also had the luxury of easily inviting guest speakers to come since it was as simple as sending them a Zoom link. Special shoutout and thanks to Frank Huang, Daphne Chen, Angel Tseng, Jeantelle Laberinto, Senator Scott Wiener and Jenny Lam who came and spoke during AAMPLIFY sessions. In addition, we hosted a webinar on Prop16 in the midst of the summer to provide a means for students and young adults to learn more about Affirmative Action and why it is important. For those that missed the webinar, you can check it out here! In addition, see our blog post for more resources on this important topic: here.

What’s Next

We’re excited to begin our college admissions mentorship program over the next few months. If you’re interested in joining as a college admissions counselor, or learning more about it, please reach out to us!