Hey, everybody. Meet Wei Chen. Hailing from Philadelphia, he's one of fifty finalists up for the Peace First Prize, a $50,000 fellowship that honors young people who are engaged in peace-making projects in their community. Will you cast a vote for him by showing some social media love?I've actually written about Wei's work before. He was one of the leaders of the student boycott at South Philadelphia High School in 2009. As a young student, he organized fellow immigrant youth to speak out against racial harassment and violence at his school -- a community story we followed very closely.
Not only did the work result in a groundbreaking civil rights settlement by the U.S. Department of Justice, Wei and the community organizing around the struggle won new leadership and staff, changed policies training and practices at the school, and built multiracial student coalitions to dismantle zero tolerance policies.
Recently, Wei co-founded the Chinatown Youth Organizing Project to help new immigrant youth come together to build leadership for collective action.
He's an impressive young leader, right? He gets my vote. To support and vote for Wei, you can tweet, +1, or recommend the link to Wei's page. To learn more about Wei and Peace First Prize, go here.
