Kinston Teens and NC FIELD have been hard at work finishing our work associated with the Civic Spring project and building capacity around the 2020 Election. Our work since we last reported includes:
* Organizing a National Voter Registration Day event on Tuesday, September 22. This event, led by two youth from Kinston Teens and NC FIELD, provided a socially-distanced in-person opportunity for us to provide food, fun and PPE to members of our community encouraging them to register to vote and complete the 2020 census. Nearly 100 members of the community came out for the event, we registered or updated the registration of 25 voters, and helped 5 community members complete their 2020 census.
* In mid-September we received our results back from our Civic Engagement Survey conducted with support from CIRCLE. Between the survey, our dialogues in our group meeting, and assessments from the community, we realized that there’s still a lack of knowledge regarding election-related information (where to vote, how to vote by mail, how to register, etc.). This led to our youth spending the remainder of September working on our final project as a part of CSP — LenoirVotes.org. Our youth worked together to identify what were the most important things community members needed to know around the election and compiled them into an easy-to-read website. This information includes, polling locations and times, the voter registration process, how to vote by mail, and who is on the ballot.
* We’ve hosted our weekly meetings on Sundays to organize our projects and have important conversations regarding our project topics. Some of the issues/events we’ve discussed include: the presidential debate, a protest being held in Kinston, Lenoir County Public Schools’ switch to in-person learning, and the lack of justice for Breonna Taylor.