Headshot Photo of Emanuelle Sippy
2021 Award Recipient

EmanuelleSippy

Project Coping With COVID-19 Student-to-Student Study

Location Lexington, KY

Issue Area Advocacy/Activism | Health

As a co-leader of a Kentucky education justice group called the Student Voice Team, Emanuelle had experience as a community organizer. When the pandemic began, she organized the Coping with COVID-19 Student-to-Student Study (CWC) to help identify and ultimately address issues of education inequity. With nearly 10,000 survey responses from 119 of 120 Kentucky counties detailing students’ social-emotional health and home lives,

Coping with COVID-19 also created a community of support, mobilized students to reach broad audiences, and generated policy recommendations. The Kentucky Student Voice Team has reached tens of thousands through op-eds, policy reports, school climate audits, roundtables, presentations, rallies, teach-ins, media appearances, conferences, a published book, and testimony before the state legislature.

During regular school, teachers would take the time to check in on us… since quarantine started, there is less emotional support which has made me feel very alone… I don’t want to reach out to the teachers and bother them. - Upper middle class sophomore

Emanuelle Sippy
“It is never too late, too early, or too often TO GIVE BACK AND MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE”
Helen Diller