Students in Texas county learn civic engagement skills at Student2Government Leadership Academy

Amid a deadly heat wave last summer, Hurricane Beryl’s 80-mile-an-hour winds left nearly 3 million homes and businesses in Harris County, Texas without power. At the time, 18-year-old Samantha Velasquez was participating in Harris County Precinct 2’s Student2Government Leadership Academy, which is designed to help teens develop leadership skills and become more civically engaged. 

Her own home damaged and without power, Velasquez felt called to use the community organizing she was learning in the leadership academy. She went house-to-house in her neighborhood to make sure that people had support and were calling CenterPoint Energy to alert the electric company of their lack of power. 

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Student2Government Leadership Academy won the 2024 NACo Achievement Award in the Civic Education and Public Information category.

“I think we’re stronger together,” Velasquez said. “And people were literally on [breathing] machines. They needed power, so we didn’t have much time.”

Due to the volume of calls from the neighborhood, CenterPoint Energy prioritized service to the community, according to Velasquez. She also reached out to local government officials to ensure that her neighborhood didn’t get lost in the fray of the county’s disaster response, she added. “There was so much [for commissioners] to deal with,” Velasquez said. “Communities needed to come together and speak up.”

Velasquez had previously served as an electronic support specialist at the polls and saw the leadership academy as a way to become more civically engaged and involved in the community, she said. Throughout the four-week program, participants learn about the impact of local government and how the voting process works, attend Commissioners Court, engage with local arts and culture and work on a group volunteer project. Applicants must attend a Harris County high school, and teens in Precinct 2 are prioritized. 

Mario Salinas, a Harris County employee, leads the program. Salinas previously worked to get Latinos in Harris County eligible to vote through the non-partisan organization Mi Familia Vota. Latinos, who are the largest demographic group in Texas, represent 50% of the total growth in eligible voters from 2020 to 2024, nationally. They have been the majority demographic in Texas since 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“I’m grateful to be here at Precinct 2 and grateful that Commissioner [Adrian] Garcia has enabled me to build this and to engage young leaders,” Salinas said. “Because these are skills that we all need.”

Garcia’s time as a Harris County police officer, and the structured hierarchy of the police department, made him realize how many people had the potential to be leaders, which is why he went on to create the Leadership Development Institute in the Sheriff’s Office and fund the Student2Government Leadership Academy, he said. 

In the police department, “You were taught that you don’t speak unless spoken to and even then, be immensely reserved,” Garcia said. “I knew that there was a lot of perspective and input that we were losing, because we were just that structure.”

The Student2Government Leadership Academy has also enabled Harris County to be on the pulse of what young residents are passionate about and what impacts them the most, Garcia said.

“We have been having a lot of conversations as of late, to ensure that we utilize the groups of young people coming to the office as an advisory,” Garcia said. “We regularly work to touch base with them to gain perspective on things that are top of mind for them … and we really try hard to bounce ideas off of them to make sure that we’re on the right track.”

Participating in the leadership academy, particularly seeing the Commissioner’s Court in action, inspired Velasquez, a Mexican American, to channel her passion for her community into creating a leadership and networking organization for young Latina women, which she’s in the process of building.

“It gives me that inspiration to keep being engaged, keeping others around me engaged and doing all that I can to make sure that we make our voices heard,” Velasquez said. “I feel that through the Student2Government Academy and the encouragement of both Mr. Salinas and Commissioner Garcia, I really did gain the confidence and skills necessary to really make change in my community, which is something that I’m trying to do now.”

Velasquez, a first-generation college student, is in her first year at Houston Community College, where she’s getting her associate’s degree in business. After the next two years, she plans to study political science and is interested in pursuing a career in local government, she said. Velasquez recently voted for the first time, and said she uses social media to encourage others to become more civically engaged. 

“I think if everybody were to truly pursue civic engagement, our community would be so much stronger — not just here in Harris County, but all over the world,” Velasquez said. “If everybody were to get involved and get educated, we’d be very well off.”