By Jill Fox
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School graduate Sari Kaufman was honored by the Helen Diller Family Foundation for her role in making the world a better place.
A political science major at Yale University, Kaufman, 19, co-founded the civic education organization and website MyVote Project to educate and engage voters.
The $36,000 Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Award, which celebrates the Jewish principle meaning “to repair the world,” may be used to further her initiative and her education.
“I think it shows that the work I’m doing is making an impact, and people are noticing it’s clearly an important issue,” said Kaufman, who has been a voting activist since the 2018 school shooting, when she became passionate about gun violence prevention and civic education.
The Diller Family Foundation supports Jewish teen leadership, which Kaufman showed in the mission she began after co-leading March for our Lives and registering about 1,000 voters.
She discovered that voters were uninformed about local candidates’ positions, which compelled her to co-found MyVote Project. The student-led education organization provides nonpartisan voting information, like candidates’ backgrounds and policy stances, in addition to hosting candidate forums and policy events.
Currently, Kaufman is excited to start her sophomore year at Yale, but she’s keeping busy with “about 50 elections around the country between now and the end of the year,” she said.
“We want to make sure young people understand the power they have to create change in this world.”
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