Black Girls Vote was out in full force leading up to Maryland's primary race on Tuesday with the goal of educating and engaging more black voters in the state.
HuffPost's Alyona Minkovski spoke with Ebonee Nelson, the organization's director of program management, on the day of the primary race, to hear more about how the organization aims to empower black women through the political process. The non-partisan, grassroots organization, which launched in November, focuses on registering people to vote, encouraging them to head to the polls and spreading awareness in schools.
"We wanted to help mobilize those community members," she said. "We wanted to talk to them, engage with them, find out why were they so angry. [We] wanted to help translate those keywords, [that] vocabulary that they're not familiar with. Help educate them [and] break that down into layman's terms."
Once the election is over, Nelson said, the organization will be launching BGV University, through which leaders from the group will go to different schools to focus on teaching about the voting process with incentives and games for the students.
Nelson acknowledged that the millennial generation is "our future," and ended on a poignant note.
"If they don't trust in [their] voice and they don't trust in their vote, and they think they don't have a voice, then what do we have for our community tomorrow?"
Learn more about the Black Girls Vote in the video above.
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