WACO, Texas (KXXV) — Waco High School Alumni Lily Coffman received the Voyager Scholarship for Public Service.
The Voyager Scholarship was created by the Obamas and Brian Chesky, Co-Founder and CEO of Airbnb.
- Her initiative aims to encourage voter participation
- Coffman is a Waco native and attended Waco High School
- The scholarship allows her to travel and study voting initiatives in other states.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
"Voting has always been something that I'm really passionate about," Lily Coffman said.
Coffman moved to Waco in the seventh grade, after her mother Dr. Elesha Coffman, accepted a job at Baylor University.
Now, she's a junior at Brown University studying math and history — two concentrations her mother says do not typically go together.
"Those are the things she's interested in, and she is just going to pursue her interests while also being very, very engaged with her community," Dr. Coffman said.
But Lily is on an even more unique journey.
Last month, she and 99 other college juniors were awarded the Voyager Scholarship for Public Service.
"It was really, really exciting," she said.
On top of financial aid, the scholarship provides recipients with funding for work-travel and a 10-year travel stipend — which will help them reach more people with their public service initiative.
Coffman says her interest in public service and voting started before she could even vote herself.
"I'm passionate about voting because of my own experience, coming from Central Texas, coming from a place where a lot of my friends in high school, when they turned 18, were not excited to vote, and I thought that was kind of crazy because I knew that I was excited to vote, but there was kind of a disconnect," she said.
Coffman says one of her goals is to find out why people don't vote, and she wants to help fix that.
She says her time in school in Waco taught her about diversity.
"One of the biggest lessons I learned was how important diversity is," Coffman said.
"I went to Waco High, which is an incredibly diverse school and an incredibly diverse school district, and learning from people whose experiences and backgrounds were really different than mine was really impactful."
