Florida consistently ranks among the worst states in the country on issues such as child health and education, a position which Worst To First, a social action organization, seeks to reverse.
Toward this goal, Worst to First is partnering with the Lawton Chiles Foundation to host the first Lawton Chiles Leadership Corp. conference.
Gainesville's Mayor Peegen Hanrahan is serving as an honorary director for the program, which will take place Aug. 8 and 9 at the University of Central Florida.
Rising high school juniors, seniors and college students who attend will be taught how to organize educational funding awareness campaigns on their own campuses.
"[State legislation] is dismantling university education," said Lawton "Bud" Chiles, founder of Worst to First. "Unless we take higher education funding more seriously, without public involvement, we will continue to see the degradation of these systems."
UF students are already starting to take a stand for their education, such as when they held rallies against UF budget cuts, Chiles said.
"We want to focus that energy to the almost 1,500 high schools and dozens of colleges in the state," he said. "Because of their locations, these campuses affect every community in the state. By focusing around these campuses we will really affect the broader population."
Chiles hopes to engage at least one million Floridians to take action, because "right now, we're spending more to lock up our teenagers than to graduate them," Chiles said.
