Today we’d like to introduce you to Rizwan Khan.
Hi Rizwan, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Going into the Plano West Senior High School, I felt a tense atmosphere being developed surrounding political issues. It was almost as if I wasn’t allowed to talk about politics with my friends due to how polarized our environment had become. My friend Harshith and I sought to change that by fostering a place where we could talk about political issues in an unbiased yet open format. And from that, Politics For Teens was born. We started out as a small club at our school where we would solely talk about current events and provide both sides of the issue. Then, we would allow for a discussion where we would hear what students actually feel about the issue. Eventually, we sophisticated our structure to teaching ready-made curriculum from both domestic and foreign issues. This curriculum has allowed us to begin expansion to other schools across the state of Texas and the nation. We currently have plans to open up 15+ chapters across the United States by the start of the school year. We also have started to host youth voter drives which have featured city council and school board members, National competitions with cash prizes, and local political forums where our politicians can answer questions directly from an audience of mixed political beliefs.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Like any organization, we have certainly had our ups and downs. In our beginning months, we were a little disorganized in terms of our communication as a team. This resulted in poor attendance at our meetings with our only incentive to come to them being cookies and snacks. Our poor attendance was a wake-up call for me because I saw that our potential was flatlining. To react, I began to organize our actions in a google drive folder which held our meeting curriculum, potential events, and our officer applications. With my friends Max, Aadi, and Katie, I was able to improve my leadership skills tenfold, which allowed for our meetings to become much more sophisticated and detailed through better delegation of tasks. Eventually, this created an atmosphere where we did not have to rely on cookies or food as an incentive because our discussions were so in-depth and thoughtful that we attracted a high number of people at each meeting. We also improved our online footprint through the usage of social media, outreach, and a better website. The credit for this has to go to my friends Aryan and Khosraw, who have done tremendous effort and spent countless hours in this field. I also have to thank my friend Harshith as he has been there with me since the first day, from the trials of the start to the success of the present.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
At Politics For Teens, our mission is to promote education on different political topics on high school campuses in order to increase awareness and discourse about different perspectives. For every topic that is discussed, both sides are looked at with a high level of respect and fairness to show that, despite our political differences, we should still be able to respect one another at the end of the day. By doing so, we are helping to bridge the partisan divide that has grown in recent years. This also helps to foster a common ground for us to discuss future issues. We are also increasing greater awareness for pressing political topics by encouraging student bodies across the United States to get involved in what they are passionate about. As we always say, democracy is discourse.
What’s next?
In the future, we plan to continue to expand across the United States and maybe even into other continents. We also plan on hosting more event like our local political forum that we have currently planned for July 26th at the Cox Playhouse. This event will be a place for our community members to discuss relevant topics with our elected officials ranging from the school board, city council, and state representatives. We are hoping to eventually begin town halls with our US Congress as they are more removed from our local communities, so it would be great to actually allow for people to meet and ask them questions.
Contact Info:
- Website: politicsforteens.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/politics_forteens/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/politics-for-teens/
Image Credits
Rizwan Khan
Vivek Venkataraman
Ahan Muherkjee
