Helping Equality Rise’s mission is to foster a community that can have open and educated discussions on the different ways to participate in the community. This includes how to be civic-minded, register for elections and be open to everyone’s opinions, even those not aligned with yours.
“I started HER club at the beginning of this year because I wanted to bring awareness about issues going on in our world that we don’t really talk about,” President of HER, Kelsey Frieborn said. “I feel like Oak Park doesn’t have a club already that talks about ways that you can get involved through civic engagement. A lot of topics are pushed aside because they’re too hard to talk about. So I wanted to open up a space where people can talk about these things and be more educated on them.”
Despite the acronym, HER is for everyone.
“The HER makes it seem like it’s only for women’s equality and feminism,” Frieborn said. “But it really is a club to educate everyone and get everyone involved in discussions that we are not used to having.”
On March 13, HER had a voter registration drive during lunch in the Pavilion, partnering with the League of Women Voters. HER will have two more registration drives on March 28 and April 4, at the same location and time.
The purpose of the registration drive is to increase involvement and educate the public on how to register to vote. HER meets in G-5 once a month to teach their members on the different forms of community involvement.
“This [the registration drive] is just to get more people involved and to educate as many kids as we can about civic engagement opportunities,” Frieborn said. “At our registration drive we are doing a different topic every drive. So last week it was about civic engagement opportunities like getting involved in an election or joining a club.”
