2021 John Lewis Youth Leadership Award Recipient
Fiona Akilo Stawarz, 18, South Portland
Fiona is a powerful organizer and advocate for social justice. Her civic engagement has been informed by her identity as a young black woman growing up in South Portland, Maine. In nearly all of her academic and extracurricular interests, Fiona seeks to understand the world and systems she is a part of – and to subsequently take action that will improve her community. Moreover, she organizes and supports other young folks interested in doing the same.
At South Portland High School, Fiona is an active leader who works to increase civic engagement and advance racial justice in her school. She founded her school’s first Black Student Union. As a member, she advocates for and with her peers for anti-racist education materials and a supportive school environment for students of color. She serves as a student representative on the South Portland school board and also interned with her Principal to increase student involvement in school government across the board. Beyond her high school, Fiona is working with the Maine Department of Education to design an anti-racist curricula for students across Maine. She is also developing a website with self-care resources for students of color and education resources about the histories of black, indigenous and people of color.
In her broader Maine community, Fiona is a changemaker. In the summer of 2020, she organized a Black Lives Matter protest in response to the murder of George Floyd that drew over 300 South Portland residents. She was a featured panelist at the NAACP’s 39th Annual MLK Celebration in February 2020 and her community organizing was profiled by the Portland Press Herald in July 2020. Recently, Fiona spoke on a panel at the University of Maine School of Law titled Racial Justice: Uplifting Black and Brown Youth Voices to Inspire Change. She was also interviewed by Education Week to talk about protests against police brutality. In each of these roles, Fiona has advocated fiercely and relentlessly for civil rights and civil liberties in her community.
Specific to voting rights, Fiona volunteered as an intern with the ACLU of Maine to work to increase voting access for all Mainers. She worked with ACLU attorneys to identify potential threats to voting rights in Maine and brainstorm solutions. As a part of this work, Fiona helped create the Voter Protection Hotline ahead of the 2020 Elections. From testing technology, to training volunteers, to staffing the Hotline and fielding calls from Maine voters, Fiona helped the ACLU of Maine with the Hotline from start to finish. Ultimately, she ensured many Mainers could cast their ballots with confidence.
Fiona will be attending Dartmouth College this fall. She plans to turn her passion for social justice into a lifelong pursuit. In the next few years, Fiona plans to continue her education at college so she can pursue a career in policy, law, advocacy, and public service.
Honorable Mentions
When she was 19-years-old, Natalie was appointed by the Mayor of Saco to the Saco Conservation Commission. As a member of the commission, Natalie advocates to preserve land for future generations and helps promote environmental justice through climate change prevention and awareness.
Natalie is currently an intern with the Maine Democracy Project. In this role, she works towards promoting civics education, voter registration, and overall electoral engagement to increase participation with her generation. She is currently working on an initiative that aims to connect high school and college students in Maine with internships that are related to government, politics, and advocacy.
Throughout her time in high school as a student council president and now at the University of Southern Maine, Natalie works to register her fellow students to vote. Natalie takes any opportunity to help her peers find ways to get more civically engaged. She tries to make the voter registration process simple and breaks down the steps and connects her peers to local clerks. Natalie has even been known to drive students to register to vote.
Lutie was one of three students to speak before the Voter Registration Appeals Board when 75 of her fellow Colby students and faculty members had their votes called into question after a city referendum vote, helping ensure their votes were rightfully counted. Following that victory Lutie ran for, and won, a seat on Waterville’s recent Charter Commission to review and propose changes to the city’s governing document.
Lutie also serves on the Waterville Democratic Committee as the Colby College Representative, leads the Maine College Democrats, serves as Deputy Director of Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility for College Democrats of America, and serves as a leader in the Kennebec County Democratic Committee. She is the Co-President of Colby College Democrats and Colby Planned Parenthood Generation Action. Additionally, she runs the nonpartisan Colby Votes initiative and worked as a fellow for Maine Students Vote, developing nonpartisan voter education and mobilization strategies. She recently completed an internship in the office of Congresswoman Chellie Pingree.
On campus she is working towards a degree in English and Classical Civilizations while working as a Community Advisory in her residence hall, serving as a Sexual Violence Prevention Peer Educator, and tutoring in Latin.
Tallie is an AmeriCorp member at Trekkers, a youth mentoring program in the Rockland area. She is a board member of One Less Worry and is the Committee Secretary for the Rockland Democratic Committee. She is passionate about social justice, and leads by example by using her privilege to shine light on injustices both locally and nationally.
Tallie met with Senator Susan Collins to advocate for supporting youth mental health during the pandemic. She built and led the Social Justice and Community Action program with high school students. She helped form the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee at Trekkers in the Fall of 2020, and remains an active member today.
In the fall, she will be attending the University of Iowa to receive her Master’s degree in Geology, where she will put an emphasis on Environmental Racism.
Victoria has been a role model for her peers as a competitive basketball player, resilient student, and developing young professional. Victoria was unanimously voted in as a co-captain as a junior and led discussions with the team about diversity, equity, mental health, protesting during the national anthem, and understanding voting rights across the nation. These enriching conversations encouraged her teammates to get involved, be current and active in their civic duties, and stay vigilant to ways they can help their community thrive.
Since her first year of college, Victoria has been involved with the University of Southern Maine’s Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Council (IDEC), an action-oriented council composed of students, faculty, and staff that partners with University leadership, departments, and organizations to engage our community in creating and sustaining a safe, inclusive, diverse, anti-oppressive, anti-racist university for people of all identities.
In addition to her role with IDEC, Victoria has become actively involved in the creation of USM’s Student-Athlete Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Committee (SADIE), after seeing a need to come together to address race, equity, and social justice with the USM community and beyond.
Sirohi Kumar is well known to students, educators, local officials, community leaders, the general public, and the larger statewide community for her environmental and antiracist work. She was a founding member of the youth-led Climate Emergency Action Coalition (CEAC), which wrote a resolution to declare a climate emergency in the town of Bar Harbor. The resolution passed in November of 2019 and the city council passed a climate declaration. Sirohi is now a member of the Bar Harbor Climate Emergency Task Force.
In the summer of 2020, Sirohi was one of a handful of Mount Desert Island youth who founded the Racial Justice Collective (RJC): a multi-racial, multi-generational group committed to advocating for racial justice on Mount Desert Island and beyond. The RJC held multiple rallies, where Sirohi spoke, and marches on the Bar Harbor Village Green in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Sirohi’s work also led to the creation of an Anti-Racism Task Force for the local school system. The task force is comprised of students, teachers, administrators, and community members. In addition, Sirohi’s leadership inspired the town of Bar Harbor to engage in a long-term project to deal with racism in the school system, law enforcement, housing, finances, and business development. As the first step, Bar Harbor sponsored a workshop that explored the roots systemic racism. In addition to community members, several city officials and employees attended, including the Town Manager and the Chief of Police
Madeleine LaBrecque, 23, Biddeford
As a student at St. Joseph’s College, Madeleine has been a strong advocate for the rights of the LGBTQ community at her college. She is the president of the St. Joseph’s College Gay-Straight Transgender (GSTA+) student club and has proudly and positively pushed the college to be more a more inclusive and welcoming community. Madeleine helped draft and institute the college’s official statement of support and welcome for the LGBTQ community.
Madeleine has also been active in encouraging students to vote, has participated in phone banking for Get Out The Vote efforts, and collaborated with statewide groups like EqualityMaine. Madeleine has also been involved in efforts to drum up support for a local ordinance that was introduced in response to incidents of anti-LGBTQ in Standish during Pride Month.
Brandon Reed is a civic-minded second year student at the University of Maine at Farmington (UMF). In fall 2020, Brandon led a group of his peers to create the UMF Independents Club on campus. This provided him a platform from which he encouraged his peers to register to vote and it gave them a third party option in the club/organization structure at UMF.
Additionally, Brandon was selected to be a member of the 2021 Collegiate Leadership Competition team. This is a ten week intense virtual leadership experience during which student leaders enhance their leadership skills, fine tuning their ability to become digital leaders in this global world. The UMF team recently competed internationally with team from around the world and UMF finished in the top 10 teams.
In March 2021 Brandon was named a 2021 Newman Civic Fellow by the National Campus Compact. The National Campus Compact is a coalition of colleges and universities committed to the education of students for civic and social responsibility. Brandon is one of only four students in Maine selected for this award. He will have the opportunity to participate in numerous virtual training and networking experiences through the Compact to enhance skills and connections to create large scale positive change.