By Abby Cohn
Jacqueline Jelincic doesn’t fit the stereotype of your average Leaguer—after all, she got her start with the Oakland League before she was old enough to vote.
Now 18, a registered voter, and a rising senior at Bishop O’Dowd High School, Jacqueline has served for the past year as our social media intern. In that role, she has created eye-catching posts about League news and events for our Instagram and Facebook feeds. Jacqueline has loved her assignments, always striving to craft images and videos that get viewers of all ages as excited about League activities as she is. “I want people to be drawn in and engaged,” says Jacqueline, who taught herself the basics of graphic design after receiving the internship.
“I think everyone needs to be involved in politics,” she says. Jacqueline is especially interested in getting young people like herself interested in political issues. “We need more young people voting because that’s consistently one of the groups least represented in elections,” she notes.
Jacqueline first learned about the League on a class trip to Washington, D.C., in January 2023 when she was just a high school sophomore. The director of the League’s D.C. branch gave a presentation to the teens about the League’s efforts to secure voting representation in Congress for District of Columbia residents. Jacqueline was captivated. “I just found that whole discussion really interesting and fascinating,” she says.
Hearing about an organization committed to voting rights, she thought “now this is something I can get behind. It seems like just in my area of interest.”
Shortly after her D.C. trip, Jacqueline was chatting with an O’Dowd classmate, our previous social media intern Radha Feist, and discovered that the position would become vacant with Radha’s coming graduation. Jacqueline applied for and received the internship, which carries a small stipend. Social media is an important part of our communications strategy and Jacqueline is one of our two high school communications interns. Gladis Pablo-Cruz, a senior at Fremont High School, became our second intern earlier this year. Gladis is bilingual in Spanish and English, which is a great asset to our election year outreach.
Since Jacqueline assumed the internship last spring, she estimates that she’s created more than 30 posts spotlighting topics such as last November’s special District 5 Oakland schools’ election and the 104th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.
“The thing that drew me into the League of Women Voters was the ability to be an agent of change within my community,” she says, pointing to our voter registration drives, in-depth research studies, and nonpartisan pros and cons presentations about election issues.
Young people in particular can benefit from that array of reliable resources, she says. “I think that’s the demographic that’s most vulnerable to misinformation and also the most likely to be overwhelmed” by ballot choices, she says. “Young people don’t always have those resources or know they exist. Information and knowledge are a source of power.”
Jacqueline believes we can expand our outreach to young people and help unleash their potential for political change through social media platforms and by forming partnerships that offer guidance and mentorship to members of student political groups at local schools. While a single vote may not make a difference, “If you get an entire generation mobilized, those voices do matter,” she says.
Along with her League activities, Jacqueline maintains a dizzying schedule of service and extracurricular activities at school. She helps organize school admissions events as a Dragon Ambassador captain and is a peer tutor. This coming year, she will serve as an Eco Leader coordinating operations of the school’s 4-acre garden and living lab. She is the president of the school’s Chicken Tenders Club, which cares for 55 chickens, and she founded the school’s Archery Appreciation Club. She plays in the school band. She’s also vice president of O’Dowd’s Bay Area Student Activists club, which empowers students to be conscious voters and active participants within local government.
Looking beyond high school, Jacqueline hopes to double major in environmental and political science in college with an eye toward becoming a political adviser focused on climate policy.
Though her social media internship is coming to an end, Jacqueline would like to stay involved with our organization and is especially interested in growing the connection between the League and student political groups. “I think the work the League is doing is very important,” she says. “I still feel I have a lot to add and contribute.”
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